ALEPPO, Syria — Workshops
in Syria's Aleppo used to clatter on into the night before the war, but these
days the machines grind to a halt at 6pm sharp because of power cuts.
اضافة اعلان
Fighting ended almost five years ago in the country's former
economic hub, but limited electricity supply has hampered a full return to work
in its manufacturing neighborhoods that produce everything from plastic to
food.
In the Karm Al-Qatarji district famous for textiles, Mahmud
Majkini, 31, said his business weaving medical gauze was still reeling from the
effects of the decade-old conflict.
"I can't say the war has really ended as my machines
haven't gone back to working around the clock," he said.
The conflict has ravaged electricity networks as well as oil
and gas infrastructure across the country.
Syria's largest oilfields remain beyond the government's reach
in the country's Kurdish-held northeast, and Western sanctions have hampered
fuel imports from abroad.
Syrians in government-held areas have had to adapt their
lives at home and work around power cuts of up to 20 hours a day.
Aleppo's industrial districts may receive a little more
power than residential neighborhoods, but Majkini says it is still not enough
for his business to fully get back on its feet.
Nowadays only half of his eight weaving machines shuttle
back and forth in his narrow workshop on the third floor of a building with
gutted walls.
He says he hardly dares fix the machine nearest to the
gaping facade in case he slips over the edge and falls off.
'Dicing with death'
"If we had electricity for longer, we could have worked
more and fixed the wall," he said.
But instead, "we're dicing with death".
In industrial areas of the northern city, the state is
supposed to provide power from 6am to 6pm four days a week, though in practice
even that supply is often punctuated by electricity cuts.
Outside these hours, the public network runs dead.
Businessmen who can afford it buy diesel fuel to operate
private generators, but many more are forced to shut up shop.
In residential neighborhoods, where power cuts last longer,
many subscribe to private generators.
Government forces retook control of east Aleppo from
rebels
in late 2016, after years of deadly bombardment on the besieged opposition-held
half of the city.
The fighting heavily scarred its industrial neighborhoods,
most of them in the east.
The city's electrical network was all but obliterated.
Mohammed Al-Saleh, Aleppo chief of Syria's state electricity
company, said the authorities had slowly been working to rehabilitate power
lines since 2017.
"But it's not easy," he said.
"When we returned to eastern parts of Aleppo, there
were no transmission stations, no pylons, no power stations. We're starting
over from scratch."
'Make the most of each minute'
In February, the electricity company said it had started
repairing the province's power plant — one of the country's largest — with
support from key government ally Iran.
It followed a 2017 deal between Damascus and Tehran on
"cooperation in the electricity sector", including to fix the Aleppo
power station and build a new one in the government stronghold of Latakia.
Until the network is restored, manufacturers are having to
adapt.
In Karm Al-Qatarji, Abdel Salaam Mazyek, 52, said he missed
the good old days when the neighborhood was alive with the constant swishing
back and forth of textile machines.
"We used to work non-stop," said Mazyek, who owns
a workshop producing colorful materials.
But today he only works four days a week, desperately trying
to "make the most of each minute of electricity".
Mustafa Kawwaya, deputy head of the Aleppo chamber of
commerce, said there were 35,000 factories and workshops across the city before
the war, but that the number dropped to around 2,500 at the peak of the
fighting.
Since the government retook control, some 19,000 have
reopened for business, but production is still just half of what it was before
2011, he said.
Standing on his balcony surveying the damaged buildings
nearby, textile manufacturer Mazyek said he hoped things would get back to
normal soon.
"Aleppo workers are known to be hard workers," he
said.
"But what's missing right now is electricity."
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