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Senegal: Power cut demo claim one life
Thursday, 15 July 2010 12:15
By Kemo ChamAt least one person has died as a result of the latest in a series of sporadic demonstrations against chronic electricity cuts in Senegal.
A 25 year old man was pronounced dead on Wednesday, police say, shortly after arrival at a nearby hospital.
The incident occurred following a power cut in Yeumbeul, a suburb of the Senegalese capital Dakar, prompting residents to immediately take to the streets and building barricades. Police in the area then intervened, forcing the protesting youth to retreat. The ensuing commotion
resulted in the demonstrators falling down from blacktops along the streets.A police source told Seneweb that the unidentified victim of last Wednesday’s demo was foaming in the mouth as he was been driven off in a police van to a nearby hospital.
Since the end of the football World Cup in South Africa, Senegal has suddenly plunged into endless blackouts, affecting every sector of the economy.
One newspaper report says that some areas of Dakar have gone without electricity for three whole days.
On Wednesday the people of Dakar followed on the path of several localities in the interior of Senegal, staging a series protests against the seemingly endless power cuts. People engaged in all sort of trading depending on electricity – tailors, shopkeepers, beverage sellers, hairdressers, carpenters, cell phone repairers, etc, - all took to the streets to express their anger and demand a solution to the outages which they say have halted business. Television footages showed some family members waving from their doors in support of the demonstrators in the streets.
"We lose about 50,000 CFA (76 €) per day. I live in the suburbs, I take three and a half hours round trip transportation and I'm not even sure how to work. We're really tired, one of the protesters, Youga Mboup, told Dakar based Web News.
"I have unpaid electricity bills, but how can I pay if I can not work?” demanded another.
Bad fuel
Already there have been calls for Energy Minister Samuel Sarr to resign. More protests have been planned for this weekend, according to some media reports.
Last week the Energy ministry, under the auspices of the State Minister, convened a consultative meeting in which ‘bad fuel’ was again blamed for the situation.
Senelec (the national electricity company) had claimed to have invested 21 billion francs to prevent cuts during the World Cup. But the severity of the situation in the aftermath of the tournament has become unbearable for the ordinary Senegalese. "The problem is related to adulterated fuel that we delivered. It can not be burned by our two new plants," the company’s director of communications Cheikhou Cisse said at a press conference.
Meanwhile, some protesters are urging against payment of electricity bills.
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