Dust Storms Left Residents “Helpless”

Residents in Ilam province were stranded for three days without water, gas or electricity, an MP has told government officials and Azad News Agency (ANA).

The member of parliament for Abdanan, Ali Mohammad Ahmadi, criticized the government’s Crisis Management Headquarters, saying it failed to respond to the havoc caused by severe dust storms, which descended on the cities of Abdanan, Moormooru and Sarab-bagh in western Iran beginning on February 14.

While local officials distributed protective face masks in Ahwaz, they completely ignored the Ilam province cities, where between 60,000 and 70,000 people were affected by high levels of pollution caused by dust particles as well as being left without water, gas or electricity for up to 72 hours.

“Due to lack of basic infrastructure and mis-management, the Ilam province has always been behind other areas of the country,” Ahmadi told ANA news agency. “Unfortunately the government has always concentrated on Khuzestan province. People were left helpless.”

“Even telecommunications were cut because of the outage,” Ahmadi said. “Every service in the city [of Abdanan] was closed down. It was like a ghost town,” he added. Many people were forced to ration food supplies after their refrigerators stopped working.

Ahmadi said he was forced to call the presidential office to alert them of what was going on, and to ask for assistance for his constituents. He said officials should not have been surprised by what happened in the region, particularly given the impact the storms had in other Western cities.

Read the original article in Persian