Women workers repair Sulaymaniyah's electrical transformers to keep the city lights alive

Women‌‌ 10:41 AM - 2021-07-11

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A group of women at the Sulaymaniyah Workshop for Repairing Electrical Transformers are working to repair and perform maintenance on the broken electrical transformers to keep the city lights shining and so citizens can get electricity in the best way possible.

 

20 to 30 women work at this workshop daily to repair old and broken transformers, but what is remarkable is that some of the citizens of Sulaymaniyah and its surroundings are unaware that it is these women who are doing this difficult job.

 

These women say that although the job is hard, they will continue to work to light up the homes of the people.

 

"Our job is hard, we come to this workshop daily from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. (local time) and sometimes until 3 p.m.," says Vian Ali who has been working at the workshop for 12 years.

 

"Our work is even more difficult during winters as people use more electricity in that season which creates a lot of pressure on the electric transformers," she said.

 

"We work in groups here, each group works in different parts of the transformers," she added.

 

The workshop has been established in Sulaymaniyah 26 years ago. It has more than 60 employees, most of whom are women.

 

These women say that they are constantly told that this job is very difficult and that it is a danger to their lives, but securing a living for themselves and their families has forced them to do it, but despite the difficulty they say that they love what they are doing.

 

"Our job is very dangerous from the beginning of dismantling the transformers to the last stage of putting them back together... We have been injured many times, but our love for our work has made us continue here," said Rezan Mohammed Karim, another woman working at the workshop.

 

"The oils and materials in the transformers are very bad for our health and sometimes our skins get allergies and diseases, but we don't want any house to be in the dark, we want all the houses on the border of Sulaymaniyah province to be bright," she said.

 

Women working in this area have gained great experience, saying the reason behind electricity transformer fails is that they have a lot of pressure on them as citizens use too much electricity, which makes the transformers burn, and we later fix them.

 

The women also asked citizens to use less electricity and only use it as needed to prevent the burning of these electrical transformers so that their houses would remain bright in lights.

 

"The reason for the burning or deterioration of these transformers is that there is a lot of load on them," said Nigar Sabor, another woman working in the workshop. 

 

"Now that it is summer, we repair up to five transformers a day, but in winters we fix 10 to 12 transformers a day," she added.

 

"We have to do a lot of work to fix them, so the people must use electricity as needed or else they will be without electricity," said Nigar.

 

 

 

Reported by Jamal Sargati

PUKmedia