On a poultry farm just outside Tunisia’s capital, a backhoe gathers hundreds of chicken carcasses to bury them in a pit.
The situation is not unique to this farm in El-Fahs, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Tunis, as recent power cuts have sown devastation across the country.
With summer temperatures soaring and the need for air conditioning rising in parallel, the national electricity company Steg has resorted to load shedding -- rolling blackouts to reduce the strain on the power grid when demand exceeds production capacity.
The bill for the dead poultry in El-Fahs is “huge... between 1.4 and 1.5 million dinars” ($500,000), estimates veterinarian Hamza Bouchrit.
Without ventilation or water, nearly 90% of the birds died, the equivalent of “400 to 500 tons of meat” lost, he told AFP.
On site, a putrid smell still hangs in the air.
STEG has said that load shedding was unavoidable to prevent a “blackout.”
Blackouts have sometimes lasted hours and came at unpredictable times, though outages seem to have decreased since this weekend.
With the power cut on the poultry farm, the ventilation system stopped. The water, supplied by electric pumps, also stopped flowing. The birds did not survive.
The site did have a generator, but it “is only used for emergencies” and is not designed to run for more than two or three hours, Bouchrit said.
“Since the outage lasted longer, the generator overheated and stopped working. And then came the catastrophe,” he said.
On a neighboring dairy farm, Aziz Bouhejba, who raises about 50 Holstein cows, said he had to throw away six days worth of milking -- around 1,200 liters of milk.
“These are dead losses that are hard to recoup,” he said, lamenting long and poorly planned power cuts.
That criticism has also been voiced by Concet, one of the country’s main employers’ organizations, which has condemned the lack of visibility for businesses.
Another sector hit hard, at the height of wedding and party season, is pastry production.
Samia Diab, the head of the chamber of pastry makers, says she has “never experienced such a situation” in 40 years in the business.
Her workshop in El Menzah, in the capital, has been closed for about 10 days.
“I had to throw away a huge quantity of dough made with nuts, and the motor of the cold room burned out,” she said.
“Steg didn’t give us time to take precautions, for example to install generators. No precise schedule was communicated, and we didn’t know the exact times of the outages,” she added.
“Some colleagues had even taken out loans to prepare for the summer season. After these power cuts, they feel ruined.”
Steg has said it tried to be fair, but the outages have varied greatly from one neighborhood to another and often lasted many hours, plunging some cafes, restaurants and supermarkets into darkness.
The fishing sector has also been affected, as the price of ice has gone up, driving up the prices of fish, according to Mohamed Saddam, president of the fishmongers’ chamber.
“The price of mackerel, for example, has doubled,” he says.
Faced with public anger over electricity and water cuts, parliament devoted a plenary session on Monday to the situation, but government representatives failed to appear.
Several lawmakers denounced their absence.
“It is impossible to find an official who will answer you. Go out and explain to citizens the reasons for this situation,” declared MP Adel Dhiaf.
“Some have lost their cow... Another person lost 2,500 chickens because of the power cuts. Why are we destroying our country like this?”
