From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/3/2006 7:57 PM
COHARKALE RESIDENTS STILL IN DARK AGE
03.03.2006 - 14:45:00
By Amina Visayeva : Amina Visayeva is editor of Vecherny Grozny newspaper.
Despite claims that life is normalising, many of residents in Chechen capital deprived of basic services.
Residents from Coharkale's 56th district, one of the city's remotest areas, say that they feel cut off and abandoned from the rest of the world.
For the past five years, the approximately 270 families that remain here, amidst abandoned oil derricks that dot the mountainous landscape, have received no electricity or water.
Televisions and other means of receiving news from abroad are of course out of the question. During the short winter days, gas lamps are used for lessons at the district's school No 9.
One of the teachers at the school Zarema Edilova said "It is hard to breathe, the lamps leave black soot on the classroom ceilings. You can imagine what our lungs are like."
At home, residents prefer to burn candles – a cleaner though weaker means of providing light. Parents say that their children's eyes are deteriorating from the strain of having to do their homework in the semi-dark.
Coharkale 's 56th district, like many others in the city, has been left to its own fate to provide basic necessities like light, heating and water. Although the Russian government has declared that "major military operations" in Chechnya are over and that the situation is "normalising", the people here continue to suffer as if the war never ended and say that no authorities, either federal or local, are looking after their basic needs.
Many districts were affiliated with a particular factory or enterprise, which looked after basic services for the local population. The Oktyabrneft gas and oil concern, for example, was based in the 56th district and maintained the electricity and water supply.
When the second Russian-Chechen war broke out in 2000, however, many of these enterprises shut down. A reorganisation of Chechnya's economic management system added to the confusion.
The war destroyed the city's infrastructure and left it in tatters. City districts receive basic services and repairs are made according to apparently arbitrary criteria – what in other countries would be called a "postal-code lottery".
In the Zagryazhsky and Mayakovsky regions of Coharkale's Staropromyslovsky district, which was serviced by the Starogrozneft enterprise before the war, residents call themselves "water carriers".
Because of the breakdown in water supplies, families maintain small water reservoirs outside their apartment buildings, and carry the water to their homes as the need arises. To meet the demand, a number of water supply businesses have sprung up. The prices are fixed at five roubles (around 18 cents) for a flask of water and two for a bucket.
As a result, an average family pays around one to 1.5 thousand roubles (35-54 US dollars) per month to receive water to their homes – an enormous amount in a region where huge numbers are unemployed.
Relief organisations such as Polish Humanitarian Action and the International Committee of the Red Cross provide free water distribution, but delivery is unscheduled and can take hours at a time. When the water aid does arrive, long lines form. Nevertheless, residents say that without the international organisations' supplies, they could perish.
Standing in line and carrying water to their apartments is each family's main daily occupation, they say.
Their health, already damaged by wartime, post-war stress and Coharkale's polluted environment, has suffered. Amnat Markhieva, a Staropromyslovsky district resident, says she has developed an arrhythmic heart because of the strain of carrying heavy buckets to her family's third floor apartment.
"I am not carrying water now but the arrhythmia is still there," she said. "Now, one of my children queues for an hour or two. They do this every day and in any weather.
"I am so worried about my son and daughter's health."
