I wrote about the electricity and water bills increase back in January 2016, predicting then that the proposed rises would see us with a 222 per cent jump in the bills by July 2019. Well I was a bit wrong on that. For the same usage as in 2015 my July 2018 bill is more or less 222pc higher than 2015 and we still have the biggest of the proposed rises to come next March.
It is a squeeze for us and we live in a relatively modern house with efficient air conditioners and good thermal conductivity. My July bill was still less than the last July one I paid in my old villa in Budaiya back in 2007 when the bills were fully subsidised. And it is in all these older villas around the country where it is hitting hardest.
We have a number of friends who live in older compounds and by and large they love their houses, or did. The compounds are established with lots of plants and nice neighbours who get together for many compound parties and where the children can roam around safely.
But, and it’s a big one, some of these villas are now running up power and water bills of more than BD700 a month in the summer. That’s usually more than they are paying in rent. For some, it is the last straw and they have left Bahrain to return to their home countries. Others are making plans to do so, in many cases years before they expected to leave and are having to move the children out of school during crucial study time.
Others are staying but are moving out of their old much-loved villas to more modern ones with more efficient cooling. This has left a number of really great old compounds in Saar and Budaiya empty like ghost towns. A lot of these compounds are owned by single Bahraini families and provided them with the bulk of their income which has gone now, so not just expats being affected.
I suppose the answer is to bulldoze all the old houses and build new efficient ones but that takes a sizeable investment which a lot of these families cannot raise. They will end up selling the compounds for only the price of the land, and once that money is spent will have nothing left.
I fully understand that the government needed to remove the subsidies and start charging the actual cost of production for power and water and the timetable was published, but I doubt if anyone back in 2015 really understood how much this was going to cost us.
As I said earlier, for me it is a bit of a squeeze which entails two or three fewer evenings out a month but what about the less well-paid members of the expat community?
They are not just paying the same as I am, but as they also tend to live in less well-constructed properties in many cases their bills are now almost as much as their whole monthly salary. How are they coping?
I guess they just keep the A/C switched off in the summer and suffer. Would it be too much to ask the government to postpone the rise scheduled for next March or at least spread it out over another four or five years.