The breakdown of electricity in the country is now entering its second week and in just one week, it has almost crippled the overall functioning of the country. The functioning of government offices, different small and big businesses and the households are badly affected by this electricity problem. According to the reports, last week’s severe snow and wind brought down a number of giant electric pylons in the northern part of the country. The electricity being imported from Tajikistan was shut down due to this incident and the capital fell into the worst darkness of its history. The severe snowfall in the north also blocked the Salang tunnel which is the only access of country to the northern areas. It was opened yesterday and it is hoped that the broken electric pylons would soon be repaired and supply of electricity would be resumed.

Till now, the reaction of government authorities in the resolution of this problem has been disappointing. Although the terrestrial connectivity of the country with the north of the country was blocked by the heavy snowfall, the severity of the situation needed that better steps should have been taken to solve the problem in the least time possible. In this regard, the military helicopters could have been used to carry the engineers and their equipment across the Salang tunnel. For almost a week, the government authorities were waiting for the opening of Salang tunnel to start the restoration work of fallen pylons.

This incident also brought into light the fact that our basic infrastructure is much vulnerable to a number of threats, be it natural or man-made, and we don’t have any alternate solution to tackle any such emergency situation. In this era of information technology, when almost all the functioning of government and private organizations depend on machines run by electricity, such a feeble condition can be termed as a potential threat for the overall system of government and private sector. During the last week, we saw that we were having very poor management of electricity and our electricity-dependent system jammed down due to this electricity breakdown. Instead of repairing the damaged pylons, we don’t have any other option to run the machinery of state and if the condition persists for long, it may end up in the loss of millions for the overall economy.

Another big threat was the only option of connecting to the northern areas of the country. The only reliable way of connecting to the north of the country is the famous Salang tunnel but in the months of winter, due to heavy snowfall and incidents of avalanches, the tunnel is blocked for many days every year. Although there are also present a number of other ways that connect the center of the country with its northern areas but they are even more dangerous than Salang tunnel and the rough road and dangerous elevations make them almost impossible for any kind of reliable transportation. Realizing this grave fact, it is needed that better projects should be made for  the rehabilitation of Salang tunnel so that the tunnel should be open for traffic at any given time in a year. Alternately, the routes except Salang can be made better so that we should not always be relying on a single route.

At present, we badly depend on the electricity exported from Tajikistan. Unfortunately, we have failed to utilize properly the resources available to us for the generation of domestic electricity. Although we have some dams and hydroelectric generation projects but these are not good enough to meet our needs. In last 12 years of democracy, no serious work has been undertaken in this regard. Although the sincerity of our past governments cannot be doubted in this regard, but they failed to realize the increasing demand of electricity and increasing dependency of our economy and public and private sectors on electricity. It is also a fact that electricity generation projects are so grand in scale that they require billions of dollars for their construction and many years until they start generating electricity. Even in the advanced and developed countries, governments depend on private investment or loans from international monetary agencies and banks for the completion of such big projects. However, it is needed that the present government should give extra attention towards this sector because it takes many years until a project is started and its feasibility report is finalized. In the same way, a number of countries in the world are ready to invest billions of dollars in such grand projects. Our neighbor and friend nation China is famous in the world for their huge investments in the energy sector of a number of countries of the world. If our government starts its efforts, it is hoped that China and other countries of the world would come forward to invest in the energy sector of Afghanistan and soon, we will be able to meet the requirements of the country.

The present government seems to be sincere in bringing actual solutions to the problems of the country. It is hoped that the government would also give exclusive attention to solve the energy crisis in the country.