Business likely to suffer due to outages

Sharjah: For Sharjah residents, power outages, which have become the norm during hot summer days, started early this year. Mid-May marked the start of the rationing of the power supply — almost three months earlier than the previous year.

"Residents in the crowded residential areas of Al Majaz and in towers in the Khalid Lagoon and Al Taawuun areas suffered four hours with no electricity, while workshops in different industrial areas had no power for the whole working day. The power failed at 9am in the morning and did not resume till late at night," a resident from Sharjah told Gulf News.

Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (Sewa) declined to comment on the reasons behind the power outage. Sharjah TV and radio stations did not mention the power cuts in news bulletins.

Yesterday, the power was cut to many buildings in Sharjah and civil defence and police were kept busy rescuing residents who had become trapped in lifts.

A resident in the Al Majaz area said that many buildings had no standby power generators, while those that did found they could not be started because either their batteries were dead or they had no fuel.

No option

A power shortage forced Sewa to disconnect the supply to Al Majaz park and Jamal Abdul Nasser Street, while some street lights on the Corniche Road were also turned off. Anoor Mosque on the shore of the Khalid Lagoon and the Al Taqwa mosques in the middle of the Al Majaz park, which are normally lit with powerful spotlights, were cloaked in darkness last night.

Sources from the Sharjah Airport International Free Zone and the Hamriya Free Zone confirmed that they had experienced no power cuts in the past two days. However, they expressed concern about the power outages in the city and expected them to affect their investments in due course.

"Power failure in the city and the industrial areas will have an impact on the production at the free zones. It will affect the logistics and the services the free zones should get from the city. A large number of free-zone firms count on supplies and services from the industrial area," one source said.

Another source warned that the situation would become critical for industries in the free zones if power supplies were disrupted randomly and no rationing schedule was put in place. "Like in August and September in the previous year, industries and investments in the free zones will be affected badly," he said.

Last year, Sewa said it was absorbing more than half of the cost of generating power. It scrapped a multi-layered tariff system which began with a rate of 20 fils per kilowatt and replaced it with a 30 fils per kilowatt flat rate for foreigners and commercial consumers. Sewa said that it was costing it around 60 fils per kilowatt to produce electricity and that there was no option but to increase the tariff to cover production costs.

The cost of producing electricity in Sharjah has soared in the past few years because its gas reservoirs in the Al Sajaa area are being depleted and the authority has been obliged to switch to using diesel to produce power. In 2008-2009, oil prices increased to record levels of $142 per barrel, and Sewa incurred around Dh7 billion in losses in the past two years.