Bringing power to the powerless
Solar panels provide lifeline for Rohingya in Bangladesh refugee camps
BALUKHALI: The squalid camps in Bangladesh that are now home to nearly 600,000 newly arrived Rohingya have no running water and barely any toilets, but they do have power – thanks to a proliferation of solar panels.
That means refugees can charge their phones and power electric lights and fans, a lifeline in tents that become baking hot in the strong sun.
Some of the refugees say the panels were among the few precious possessions they grabbed as they fled villages in Myanmar that were burned to the ground in a campaign of retribution following militant attacks on police posts.
Others have used their meagre resources to buy them after arriving in Bangladesh, where they have had to set up home in the overcrowded refugee camps near the border.
At the entrance to the Balukhali camp, one of the ubiquitous blue panels powers Kabir Ahmed’s makeshift grocery store.
The 46-year-old set up his small business when he arrived in Bangladesh at the start of August after fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar.
He gets enough power from the sun to run four lightbulbs and two small fans.
“Now we can have light at night, and when it’s really hot the fan gives us a bit of relief,” he said.
In the absence of mains electricity, the sun is a precious source of energy for the Rohingya now living in camps, where even food and clean water are hard to come by.
But many villages in the isolated and under-developed northern part of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where the refugees have travelled from, also lacked access to mains power.
The refugees AFP spoke to accused mainly Buddhist Myanmar of being unwilling to invest in areas inhabited by the Rohingya.
In fact, it is not just the Rohingya – 50% of the population of Myanmar lacks access to mains electricity.
Solar power was “the only source of electricity in the area”, said Anwar Sadeq, one of Kabir’s sons.
A handful of power points in tents, served by long electricity cables, are available for the 582,000 Rohingya estimated to have arrived in Bangladesh since an upsurge in violence on Aug 25.