From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 3/3/2006 3:13 PM
Chechnya: Grozny residents still in dark age
Despite claims that normal life is returning, thousands in the Chechen capital exist without basic services.
Residents from Grozny'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.
"It is hard to breathe," said Zarema Edilova, one of the teachers. "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.
Grozny'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 Chechen conflict 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 left the city's infrastructure 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 Grozny'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 Grozny'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."
As for electricity, the situation is only slightly better, as residents illegally tap into lines from the local electrical sub-stations. As a result, the light is dim and the power frequently blows out, since the networks are overloaded.
Sulim Magomayev, head of Chechnya's communal power grid, says that Staropromyslovsky residents offered to collect money themselves to pay for repairs, but even this will not help restore electricity to the district.