Japan considers building a power plant in Samawah (17/05/05)

Japan is looking at the prospect of building a $100 million, 60-megawatt thermal power plant in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah with grant aid, as Japan's first major infrastructure project within the new Iraq.

The plant will be built in Samawah

The government would like to start construction this summer and get the plant up and running by summer 2007, they said.

Samawah is where the Self-Defense Forces have been conducting their humanitarian activities. The project is expected to be a turning point in Japan's reconstruction assistance policy toward Iraq.

Assistance will be shifted from deploying troops to using official development assistance.

Japan has already conveyed its readiness for the project to the provincial government of Al-Muthanna, of which Samawah is the capital. The government has concluded that the construction is feasible, even taking local security into consideration, after dispatching research teams twice to the area since late last year, the sources said.

Al-Muthanna is the only province in Iraq that has no power plant. The electricity supply is so bad that Samawah has a 10-hour blackout every day and local authorities have been calling for a large-scale power plant as part of the international effort to rebuild the country.

Source: Japan Times