At least once a day, fans, air conditioners and refrigerators stop working in Egypt, due to power cuts, exasperating the population who are suffocating under scorching temperatures.
Elevators stop, televisions and wifi networks turn off for the duration of these outages, which until then lasted an hour or two but which, for several days, have exceeded three hours.
Over the past year, the shortages of energy and foreign currencies which have hit Egypt have led the government to introduce these planned load shedding.
In Aswan, the major southern city, and its outskirts, where it was nearly 50 degrees in the shade in June, “the lights go out and the water stops for up to four hours a day,” a resident of a nearby village, who gave his alias Tarek for fear of reprisals, told AFP.
“In the villages it’s worse,” he says, “there is no planning, food is lost in the refrigerators and people are suffering from heat stroke amid general indifference.”
In June, Aswan MP Riham Abdelnaby reported that dozens of people had died of heat exhaustion. She called for her governorate to be exempt from cuts which, she said, “endanger the lives of citizens”.
With the scorching temperatures of June, the cuts became longer and more frequent, putting the Egyptians’ nerves to the test. Exasperation is even spreading to talk show hosts, usually fervent supporters of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
– “Not a luxury” –
“Electricity is not a luxury, it is a most basic right,” presenter Lamis al-Hadidi wrote on X on Monday.
“Power cuts deprive us of water, landlines, internet and they damage electrical appliances. Who is going to compensate people for all this?” she said.
Everyone remembers the summer of 2013, when power cuts fueled popular anger against the presidency of the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, which led to the dismissal of the head of state orchestrated by the Minister of Defense of so, Mr. Sissi.
Today, the cuts are hitting an Egypt facing the worst economic crisis in its history.
Since 2022, the Egyptian pound has lost two-thirds of its value and last year inflation hit a record high of 40%.
On Sunday, Amr Adib, host of the popular show al-Hekaya, criticized officials for not respecting the announced schedules. Even then, he says, everyone fears future “increases in the price of electricity” planned by the government.
– Apologies from the government –
This week, in addition to planned daytime blackouts, entire neighborhoods in Cairo experienced nighttime blackouts lasting up to two hours.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli tried to calm the crowds by offering “the government’s apologies” while acknowledging that the three-hour power cuts would continue this week.
The increase in outages, he explained, was due to the fact that a “gas field in a neighboring country”, which supplies natural gas to Egypt and which he did not mention by name, was “inoperable for more than 12 hours”.
He added that Egypt would spend around $1.2 billion in July, or 2.6 percent of the country’s precious foreign exchange reserves, for fuel supplies.
If the government intends to end the cuts “by the third week of July”, he said, they should resume in the fall before ending definitively at the end of the year.
Although there is no official report, these measures have already caused victims in Egypt.
In Aswan, “around 40 heat-related deaths” were reported in June, Ms. Abdelnaby told local media.
In Alexandria, in the north, a musician, Mohammed Ali Nasr, died after falling into the shaft of a stuck elevator during a breakdown.
Although most Egyptians plan their outings to avoid getting stuck in elevators, similar incidents have caused at least four deaths since last year, according to media reports.
