Syndicate: AP/dpa: Power Crisis Worsening in Kosovo / Kosovo power situation termed critical as temperatures plunge (Jan. 15, 2000)

[Paola Lucchesi <paola.lucchesi@mail.inet.it>]

>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000115/aponline053830_000.htm
>
>Power Crisis Worsening in Kosovo
>
>By Melissa Eddy
>Associated Press Writer
>Saturday, Jan. 15, 2000; 5:38 a.m. EST
>
>PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - First came the war, then the winter - leaving the
>province of Kosovo cold and dark with little electricity.
>     In the snow-covered capital, Pristina, the standard greeting is:
>"Do you have power?" and U.N. officials advise residents to huddle
>together for warmth.
>     The majority of Pristina's 600,000 or so residents have been
>receiving electricity for less than six hours a day. Some have gone
>without for 48 hours in a stretch.
>     It's a problem that has disrupted regular life in Kosovo, caused
>much discomfort and posed danger in homes and hospitals alike. Because
>water is pumped by electricity, the outages have caused pipes to run
>dry, which in turn has caused shutdowns in the central heating system.
>     All but emergency surgery has been canceled at the hospital.
>Without heat, city schools have been forced to close in the afternoons.
>Only businesses and restaurants that have generators can keep regular
>hours.
>     Ljuljeta Shala, 36, a dentist in Pristina, has closed her practice
>for lack of power. On Saturday, she packed up her belongings her
>14-month-old son, Gon, and headed for Skopje to stay with her mother
>until the situation improves.
>     "Every morning I get up, I can see my breath," said Shala. "My
>child is freezing and he sleeps all the time because its too cold to get
>out of bed."
>     Her husband Skendar, 41, is staying. He went to buy a stove for the
>living room and a generator to put on the balcony. "The neighbors won't
>like it," he said, referring to the generator noise, "but I'm beyond
>caring. We can't live like this."
>     Earlier in the week, the U.N. mission in Kosovo called an emergency
>meeting of international and local leaders to try and cope with the
>situation should it reach crisis proportions.
>     But nothing is being done. Locals figure it's the United Nations
>responsibility to improve the situation, so they wait for the
>slow-moving wheels of Kosovo's international administration.
>     The U.N. refugee agency is preparing kits of plastic and
>wood-burning stoves. More than 30,000 blankets and 60,000 sleeping bags,
>as well as winter clothing, also have been readied should the situation
>reach get worse.
>     "We are encouraging people to congregate in a room," to keep warm,
>said Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for
>Refugees in Pristina.
>     Kessler said they were particularly worried about urban areas,
>where people depend on electricity for heat.
>     The U.N. mission said Friday it expected the situation to improve
>over the weekend when another generator unit is expected to go online.
>     But with just 240 megawatts of electricity available being produced
>at the power station and arriving from neighboring countries, most
>residents who depend on electricity to heat their homes get only enough
>power in the day to keep food and pipes from freezing over as
>temperatures hover around freezing and often dip below it at night.
>     Poor maintenance, outdated equipment at the power station and a
>shortage of fuel has caused the trouble, the U.N. mission has said.
>Kosovo - and its ethnic Albanian majority - has for years been neglected
>by Serbia, leading to the poor state of energy generating equipment.
>     And with its troops out and NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo, Belgrade
>clearly now has no interest in providing power to the province it has
>lost all but formally, particularly as it does not have enough energy
>for residents of Serbia proper.
>
>© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
>_______________________________________________________________________
>http://wwwnotes.reliefweb.int/files/rwdomino.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8a
>d5/c71f7675e824d32e852568660055091d?OpenDocument
>
>R e l i e f W e b
>http://www.reliefweb.int
>Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur
>Date: 14 Jan 2000
>
>Kosovo power situation termed critical as temperatures plunge
>
>Pristina (dpa) - Chronic electrical brownouts and blackouts have created
>a critical power situation in Kosovo, U.N. officials warned Friday,
>saying refugees were bearing the brunt of the problem.
>     U.N. relief officials were bringing in 30,000 blankets and 63,500
>insulated sleeping bags along with 380,000 children's thermal winter
>jackets, said U.N. spokesman Peter Kessler in Pristina.
>     ``It is not yet a humanitarian catastrophe, but we are facing now a
>serious power shortage,'' said Kessler. He added that the children and
>the elderly are most at risk.
>     Only one unit of the two Kosovo power plants was working Friday,
>producing only 110 megawatts. Another 101 megawatts is being imported
>from outside Kosovo. That means power in urban areas is available only
>eight hours a day, in a rotation, two hours on and four hours off. In
>many areas, however, no power is available whatsoever, a U.N. official
>said.
>     The situation reached the crisis point Monday following a power
>station fire, as winter set in with a vengeance.
>     The fire broke out in one of the two Kosovo B power plants in the
>town of Obilic Monday night. It resulted in emergency rationing of
>power.
>
>dpa al eg
>AP-NY-01-14-00 1017EST
>DAviaNewsEDGE
>Copyright (c) 2000 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH


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