PHOTOS: Protesters block road over electricity shortages in Kurdistan town

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A group of protesters on Wednesday blocked off the main road to the Kurdistan Region's town of Rania, demanding increased access to government-supplied electricity amid chronic shortages and dropping temperatures.

Locals from the village of Sarkapkan took to the main road in the chilly morning weather and lay rocks across the street to block in and outgoing traffic.

"The number of hours of electricity we get is low and, when we do, the wattage is low enough that we get constant outages," Sarkapkan resident Diyari Hussin told Kurdistan 24 during the demonstrations.

The Kurdistan Region, though faring better than the rest of Iraq, has had to supplement the shortcomings of the national system with locally installed generators with limited capacity, not designed to handle high-wattage usage. Residents typically pay higher prices for power from privately-owned neighborhood generators during the times of day when government power is shut off.

Power supply often fails to meet demand throughout the summer and winter months when residents switch on air conditioners and electric heating, with the increased usage exceeding the capacity of the region’s power plants to deliver.

Inadequate electricity has led populations of rural areas to turn to illegally cutting down trees to burn the wood for heat. The phenomenon is more prevalent in mountainous regions in the cold winter months when the residents need proper heating to temper extreme weather conditions.

Environmentalists and government officials have often called on people to avoid cutting the trees down, but high heating fuel prices, the delay in distributing government-supplied oil, and the lack of electricity in the season often result in residents breaking laws against even such small-scale deforestation.

Security forces from the province of Sulaimani, where Rania is located, announced earlier in December that, so far, they had arrested 65 people since the start of 2018 for cutting down trees in rural areas.

On December 14 in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where mass Iraqi protests that spread across several provinces in recent months began appeared to be again gaining momentum. The demonstrations there have been largely fueled by poor basic services provided by the government, electricity prominent among them.

Residents there continue to bitterly exclaim that neither the federal nor local government has made any progress in addressing their concerns, which also include the province's chronic issues of poor water quality and crippling unemployment. 

Editing by John J. Catherine