A fight for light in Lebanon

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Life in Lebanon is a daily battle to beat the power cuts caused by the country's chronic electricity shortage. If you live in a block of flats, you have to time when you go in and out to avoid getting trapped in the lift. Food goes bad because fridges don't work, families must often choose between air-conditioning and watching TV, and those on life-support machines live in constant fear of a switch-off. But if it's hell for citizens, it's heaven for operators of illegal private generators who profit by filling the gap left by the failures of the national grid. Some are former warlords who led militias in Lebanon's civil war. They're given an unofficial licence to operate, often in return for favours to the authorities in Lebanon's chaotic and often corrupt sectarian system.

Now a huge protest movement is demanding change in Lebanon - and a constant power supply is one of the demonstrators' main demands. They want to break the power of the "fuel mafia" that imports diesel for the generators and has close links to the country's leading politicians. For them, the fight for light is a fight against corruption. But can Lebanon's feeble state ever manage to turn all the lights on?

Reporter: Tim Whewell Producer: Anna Meisel

(Image: Protesters block the main entrance of the Lebanese electricity company headquarters in Beirut. Credit: European Photopress Agency)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading this podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:03.4	I'm Tim Hewell.
0:05.1	What's the connection between warlords and light bulbs?
0:09.5	Listen on.
0:10.5	This episode of Assignment is called A Fight for Light in Lebanon.
0:15.0	So we're just entering this tall concrete tower in the centre of Beirut and this is one of the most reviled institutions in the whole
0:26.6	of Lebanon just about to go up in the lift if the lift works.
0:31.6	You're listening to assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Hewlett.
0:36.3	This is the headquarters of Erectité du Leibond. That's the Lebanese State Electricity Company and we're going to the center of the whole operation
0:47.6	the room where they do the switch-off.
0:51.5	Living in Lebanon means battling blackouts day in, day out for years on end.
0:58.0	The state can barely supply half the energy its citizens want and there's a whole bank of screams here it's a
1:07.5	kind of map of Lebanon laid out like a circuit board and I'm with...
1:14.4	The head of dispatching department here in I'd else.
1:19.4	So what's going to happen in four minutes?
1:22.4	So now the spatchers here, they are calling all the substations.
1:26.0	In each area in Lebanon, the electricity will be switching, the one who has no electricity will have electricity and this
1:35.6	business so at this exact moment what happens in those houses I don't know My job is here to keep this transmission
1:44.9	green stable. I don't...
1:46.7	As a question, it's not for me. But now the Lebanese have had enough. They've had enough of the blackouts. They've had
1:59.8	enough of the whole political system that they blame for the power cuts.
2:04.0	I think it's crazy to think that we're in 2019 and there's no electricity.
	...

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