18 February 2004	Wednesday	26 Zilhaj 1424

KABUL: A record snowfall last week wreaked havoc on Kabul and other major areas of Afghanistan, but many citizens rejoiced that the thirsty land was quenched, and they would have more water and electricity.

Talking about underground and surface water supplies, head of hydrology for the Ministry of Irrigation Sultan Mahmood Mahmoodi said: "Normal supplies are about 75 billion cubic meters, but during the years of drought they had dropped to 50 per cent and now they are back up to 80 per cent," he said.

That will help farmers, who make up the vast majority of the population, as well as city dwellers whose wells often run dry. Some 40,000 wells dried up during the drought, Mahmoodi said.

Electricity supplies in major cities are also very likely to increase in a few months because as water levels rise, there's more to run the hydro turbines.

Younis Nawandish, deputy of the Ministry of Water and Power, said: "The two days of snowfall does not have immediate effects on the reservoir, but next year [after March 21, Afghanistan's New Year] when the weather warms and the snow melts it will have a great effect."

He hopes that the ministry will be able to supply 24-hour electricity for the rest of the year, instead of just the two months that it offered last year. But for some, the snowfall - heaviest in at least five years - was yet another disaster in lives that have known nothing but war and poverty.

Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan were left without shelter as their tents collapsed under the snow's weight. Children and elderly people fell ill from the cold because their families were too poor to buy heating fuel.

Maah Gul lives in a tent city of 200 families in western Kabul with her widowed daughter-in-law and five grandchildren. She said: "At midnight our tent fell down and my grandchildren have got severe pneumonia from cold, I got sick too. We don't have any place to live.

Weeping, she wondered why the government didn't do anything: "No one cares if you live or die. There is no help." But the neighbours around the tent city came to aid her and others in putting their tents back up, and a taxi driver gave Maah Gul and her family a free ride to the hospital.

Pneumonia, flu, grippe, and other respiratory illnesses increased by about 30 per cent during the snowstorm, said Professor Hanan Barai, a lecturer in internal medicine in Kabul University medical faculty. -Dawn/The IWPR News Service.