A number of residents of Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, on Saturday held a protest gathering against what they called unfair electricity tariff.
At the gathering, speakers said local residents faced various problems due to continuous outages
Fazal Haq, a resident of second police district of Mazar-i-Sharif city, told Pajhwok afghan News that they gathered in protest against high electricity prices.
He said despite Balkh province location in neighborhood of Uzbekistan from where most of the country’s electricity is imported, the power price was 50 percent higher compared to other provinces.
“A kilowatt of electricity in Jawzjan province is priced three Afghanis, it is 2.5 Afghanis in Kabul but six Afghanis in Balkh, what kind of justice is this, why the law is not implemented equally on all,” he said. He said they would stage more protests if their demands were ignored.
Mohammad Hasham, a resident of fifth police district of Mazar-i-Sharif city, also said the government should apply the law equally in all parts of the country.
“We do not know why the electricity price is many times higher in Mazar-i-Sharif city compared to other parts of the country, this situation is not tolerable and the government should rethink about it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS) branch in Balkh said they had shared the Balkh people’s complaint with the power utility’s main office.
Eng. Hamidullah Hamidi, DABS head for Balkh, said a new tariff plan had been prepared to introduce uniform power rate in the whole of the country. He said the plan would be enforced in near future.
