Arakan News Agency
In the misery of Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, which is deprived of water and infrastructure, many refugees are turning severe heat into an energy source thanks to solar panels.
At the entrance to the BaluKhali camp, which is packed with large numbers of refugees from Myanmar, one of these planks rises above a shop where material is available for the refugee, Kareeb Ahmed, to earn a living.
The 46-year-old man was a shrimp framer in Myanmar, but like hundreds of thousands he had to leave his country for neighboring Bangladesh in early August to escape the violence described by the United Nations as ethnic cleansing.
This battery-powered panel provides sufficient electric current to illuminate 4 lamps and two ventilation fans.
“We have a light at night, and when its hot, the fans help,” he says.
The cost of this board and its associated extensions is 7,000 taka (77 euros), Khabir Ahmed says his friends in Bangladesh donated him.
In the absence of a power grid, these solar panels are a valuable source of energy in the Rohingya camp, which lacks almost everything.
In the face of the great importance of these panels, a number of Rohingyas came with them from their own country. Arakan, northern Myanmar, was remote and lacked development and electricity.
A number of refugees accuse the Myanmar authorities of neglecting their areas and depriving them of electricity.
So solar panels were the only source available to them to generate the energy they needed, Anwar said.
In Arakan, the family owned a solar panel that generates 20 watts of electricity, but left it there when they ran away, a 50-watt plate in Bangladesh was obtained.
On cloudy days, the family has to turn off the lights early enough to keep enough power to run fans all night long.
“But the heat goes down with the rain,” says Ahmed.
Camp residents try to economize on electricity to keep enough of their solar panels, as mobile phones are shipped in huts with multiple jacks dedicated to this purpose.
In the neighboring Kutupalong camp, Anuwara Begum puts her little solar panel on a brick wall away from the walls to absorb as much sunlight as possible.
The board is attached to a small battery with the emblem of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the camp.
In this part of the world, the sun sets at 17:30 local time. “It helps us a lot. We can have dinner before dark,” says Anuwara, 30, who arrived in Bangladesh early in September.
As night passes, the light of the lamps slowly dims, to a total darkness surrounding the refugees, compounding their anxiety about their future.
