Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, June 11, 2017
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) expresses its deep concern over the electricity crisis consequences on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. PCHR emphasizes the aggravation of the crisis and reducing the power-on hours for two months have led to serious deterioration in civilians’ all basic services, particularly healthcare services and environmental health services, including water supply and sanitation services. This crisis also deteriorated the industrial and commercial facilities’ work and increased the economic aggravation that the Gaza Strip suffers from.
Civilians residing the Gaza Strip have suffered from reducing the power-on hours to only 4 hours daily and increasing the power-off hours to 12. According to the Gaza Electricity Distribution Corporation (GEDCO), the Gaza Strip needs of the electricity currently reached 450 megawatts, and only 120 megawatts are available (26.7%) while the shortage reached 330 megawatts (73.3%). GEDCO said that the available electricity comes only from the Israeli power lines as the Egyptian power lines broke down, and the power plant is shutoff. According to a statement by the Energy Authority in Gaza published on 16 April 2017, the current electricity crisis is due to was due to full shutoff of the power plant resulted from running out of the fuel supplies need to operate the plant and Ramallah government’s stubbornness to impose taxes on the fuel…