|
Iraq reconstruction money goes unspent { July 19 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05200/540053.stmhttp://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05200/540053.stm
Iraq rebuilding goes slowly with most money unspent
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
By Antonio Castaneda, The Associated Press
BASRA, Iraq -- The United States has yet to spend almost 60 percent of its pledged $21 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq, even as the country struggles through a third summer of sporadic electricity and limited clean water.
Many schools have been built, water plants started and power stations finished -- especially in the relatively peaceful south. But frustration is high.
Iraqis in the south look with envy at the Green Zone in Baghdad, with its air conditioning and hundreds of soldiers and police for security, while they don't have water, engineer Haider Albalhary told U.S. officials visiting his project site last week.
"Six months ago, with no electricity, we said OK," Albalhary said. "One year, two years, now three years -- enough. ... My friend, three years is a long time."
Iraq's ongoing violence has been one factor, both because it delays projects by keeping U.S. engineers huddled on bases far from project sites and because it also eats into the pledged U.S. money, taking 20 percent to 23 percent of project costs, according to the Project Construction Office.
At a donors' meeting in Jordan, Iraqi Planning Minister Barham Salih expressed frustration yesterday at what he called Iraq's lack of control over reconstruction priorities and the pace of actual work. He said Iraq desperately needs power, clean water and improved sewage plants. "The aspirations of the Iraqi people for a better life cannot be delayed much longer," Salih said.
But even the most skeptical acknowledge tangible progress, particularly in the Shiite south and the Kurdish-controlled north, which elected leaders from their dominant groups to top posts in the new government.
More than 3,000 schools have been renovated nationwide, according to the Iraqi Reconstruction Management Office, and 40 new buildings have gone up in the south to replace mud huts that served as schools.
At least three water treatment plants, including an enormous project near Nasiriyah, are scheduled to open in the south in the next year. They will supply clean water to more than a half-million people.
More than 70 electricity projects have been completed, officials say. But a surge in demand has made power less available than before the 2003 invasion.
Many Iraqis pin their hopes for rapid development on the vast southern oil fields, source of the bulk of Iraqi petroleum exports. But talks on refurbishing the oil wells are deadlocked over liability issues between the U.S. government and KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, said Raymon Sundquist of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
|
|
