KABUL: For 12-year-old Kefaya Nabi, the worst thing about not having electricity in her home is not being able to watch her favorite Bollywood soap opera on TV.

The concerns of her 50-year-old shopkeeper father, Ghulam, are more serious: How will he heat their tiny house? How can his four children study without light? How will his wife cook?

Such worries are common for many people in the Afghan capital. Some 40 per cent of Kabul’s 4 million residents do not have access to the electric grid, Deputy Energy Minister Mohammed Amin Munsif says.

Foreign donors have spent billions of dollars rebuilding infrastructure since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. But progress has been especially slow in restoring electricity, with almost all power lines and power stations destroyed during a quarter century of war.

High-voltage lines are being built to connect the city with hydroelectric dams in Uzbekistan, about 300 kilometres over rugged mountains to the north. But they are not expected to be up for two more years.

For now, those in Kabul who can afford it rely on small, diesel-fueled generators.

Others buy electricity from neighbourhood businessmen who use big, noisy and polluting machines to power a few homes.

One hundred afghani (US$2) buy enough electricity to run a single lamp for four hours a night. Enough power to run a TV costs 250 afghani (US$5) — a significant sum in a city where a policeman’s salary is around 2,500 afghani (US$50) a month.

“Some months I can pay for the light, but the cost of running our television is too high,” Ghulam said as the family’s small TV sat idle on a table.

The problem is seen even in Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul’s most up-market neighbourhood, where many United Nations agencies and embassies are based. It gets power usually for just a few hours a day.

The city’s few street lights rarely shine at night. Key government departments, including the police headquarters and the defense ministry, suffer repeated blackouts. Schools and clinics built by international donations close before daylight fades.—AP