Owners of private generator businesses threaten to cut off electricity feed during the days of the Islamic Feast of the Sacrifice holiday, if the authorities don’t raise the price rate for the feed they provide and make fuel available for them.

The business owners are complaining because they have to provide feed for longer hours than before due to about 50% reduction of the feed provided by the national electricity grid.

There is a lot of pressure on us recently; the feed from the national grid is reduced and people demand more hours from us

One of those business owners is Saman Rahman. He told KirkukNow: “There is a lot of pressure on us recently; the feed from the national grid is reduced and people demand more hours from us, while the authorities don’t provide fuel for us and we can’t afford buying it at the market due to high prices.”

“We pay the government one million Dinars [about $840] per months for garbage collection. While many people don’t want to pay us and we get into quarrels.”

Saman says that they are forced to fill the gap caused by the reduction in the feed from the national grid.

“With a number of other owners of private generators, we are planning to turn off our generators in the first two days of the next months, the two days falls within the Feast of the Sacrifice”

At the start of July, Kirkuk Administration declared that the government can provide only 10-14 hours of electricity per day. But for several days there has only been 5 to 10 hours of electricity per day.

Kirkuk province requires 1,300 megawatts of electricity for daily feed, but currently there is only 500 megawatts.

Kirkuk’s interim mayor, Falah Yaychli, stressed that they are aware of the pressure on the private generator owners, and added: “We haven’t yet determined the electricity prices for the month of July, because considering the current situation we want to reach an agreement on a price that both owners of generators and customers can accept.”

private generators will have to provide 400 hours of feed per month, which amounts to more than 13 hours a day

According to information given out by Kirkuk municipality, private generators will have to provide 400 hours of feed per month, which amounts to more than 13 hours a day.

Yaychli said: “That is a high rate, because the fuel we provide to the private generators is only good for 140 hours of feed [per month].”

Another owner of private generators, Dildhad Hamid, said: “The fuel that was provided for us is not adequate for so many hours, that’s why we will cut the feed for a few days as a complaint message to the government.”

But the mayor stressed that “the plan is to provide fuel for the private generators for free in the month of August.”