Five years after President Kais Saied suspended parliament and assumed emergency powers, Tunisia is marking the anniversary of 25 July 2021 amid its worst infrastructure crisis in memory, with between 150 and 200 people reported dead since power cuts began more than a week ago during an exceptional heatwave that has also brought severe water shortages.
The death toll was reported by the Organisation of Young Doctors in Tunisia. The Tunisian authorities have not confirmed or responded to those figures.
At least five deaths directly linked to power cuts — including a cancer patient — were reported by local media in the opening days of the crisis, when power failures caused home medical equipment including oxygen devices to stop working.
President Saied ended his public absence to acknowledge the crisis on Saturday, describing the pace of outages as "not normal" and saying those responsible must "assume their responsibility," without announcing specific measures.
The state electricity and gas company, STEG, attributed the outages to record demand driven by what its director general Faysal Tarifa described as "excessive use of air conditioning," telling local media that national consumption reached a record 6,000 megawatts on Tuesday.
