Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) is facing many challenges which, in turn, give a hard time to its customers, particularly in summer. These challenges stem from factors that are putting increasing pressure on the electricity network, leading to outages in various areas.
Although there are many reasons for these outages, including the destruction of power cables, partitioning of homes comes at the top of these reasons. Some homeowners increase the load on the mains distribution board without informing Kahramaa. Tenants also increase the load, and few landlords care to monitor practices in this regard. Worse still, some landlords give their tenants a carte blanche to make changes to the wiring and power supply systems in their flats, or to even sublet these flats. This is how the number of rooms in flats increases. Some flats are partitioned into ten or even 15 rooms.
This, however, raises the load on the power supply system as each of the newly created rooms may contain an air conditioner and several electrical appliances. Unfortunately, those in the home leasing business sometimes make radical changes to electrical systems in homes without informing the authorities concerned.
Such practices not only put pressure on the electricity network but also endanger the lives of the tenants as the electrical system may collapse or catch fire if the changes made are not compliant with specifications in this regard. This makes homes unsafe as they do not meet safety and security requirements.
Partitioning of homes has attracted many people because of its profitability. For example, partitioning an apartment into ten rooms, small toilets and kitchens to house ten families can bring the original tenant up to QR30,000 in monthly revenues even as he may be paying QR10,000 to QR15,000 as rent every month.
Unfortunately, some landlords agree to lease their homes to people who re-lease them after doing the necessary partitioning. By doing this, they get a monthly income that is higher than that of some civil servants.
I strongly call for fighting this phenomenon. This needs concerted efforts by the authorities concerned. Kahramaa has to monitor irregularities and the authorities should criminalise such dangerous partitioning of homes, which turns some homes and apartments into time bombs that can explode any time, especially in summer, when the load on the electricity network increases.
