Four thousand fish died in a fish farm in Khanaqin district of Diyala Province, causing losses to the project owner amounting to 30 million Iraqi Dinars IQD.
The owner blames for the power cut the local authorities which assure it was not on purpose and fish ponds are not licensed.
Hazal Zidane, the owner of the fish farm in the village of Tuytik in Khanaqin, told (KirkukNow) that "the farm contained about 4,000 fish, all of which died, their total value was 30 million dinars."
He pointed out that the fish were not yet ready for sale though the weights of some of them were close to two kilograms.
These fish died after the power was cut off from the farm yesterday, Sunday, November 3rd. Fish farms need round the clock electricity, and a power outage of 10 to 15 minutes can lead to the death of fish, as happened with Hazal's fish.
He accused the Khanaqin Electricity Department of "turning off the basin's electricity transformer without any prior notice", and demanded an explanation, saying, "I did not commit any violation, I deal according to the law, I pay my taxes, I do not know why they turned off the transformer."
This comes while an official in the Khanaqin Electricity Department told (Kirkuk Now), "During the past two days, none of our maintenance teams cut off electricity to any place in the village of Twitik, but the transformer may have broken down due to bad weather conditions."
He explained that establishing a fish farming pond without obtaining the approval of the Ministry of Water Resources is a legal violation and is not permitted in Khanaqin.
Most fish farming ponds in Garmian reported flow of sewage into Sirwan river, the main water source for their ponds, with the water turning greenish due to the sewage water flowing upstream, a story by KirkukNow found out last August.
