Keeping track of Egypt's power cuts with "Kahrabtak"
Following the path of monitoring and keeping track of what is happening in Egypt, Kahrabtak.com (Engl.: Your Electricity) is a website where citizens can report not only power outages in their area, but also violations or unreasonable power usage, like lit light poles during the daytime.
Egypt has been suffering from power cuts for several days now, and Kahrabtak is hoping to help the citizens, not in necessarily finding a solution, but rather the source of the problem.
The team behind Kahrabtak is the same team that was behind Morsimeter.com – a website monitoring the achievements of the first elected Egyptian president in his first 100 days of power. “We are a bunch of young people, interested in technology and in the process of collecting and distributing information, without any political affiliation or direction,” Amr Sobhy (24), one of the team’s founding members, explained.
The website, Facebook group, Twitter hashtag and application of Kahrabtak were launched on Sunday, 12th of August 2012 – right after the power shortages became a serious problem and people started talking about it. Already today, the Facebook group has over 1,100 members so far.
“Usually, we - as citizens - cannot evaluate and determine the source of a problem in our country. We know the electricity goes out, but we do not know if there is a pattern, or who is most affected by it, and such information is crucial in order to be able to deal with the situation,” Sobhy explains. “Maybe if we find a pattern, things will become clearer.”
Last week, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil released a statement, telling families to help in solving the problem of power shortages by wearing “cotton clothes and sitting in one room”. A lot of criticism has been directed at him for that via social networks.
Some believe that the main source of the problem is the inefficient infrastructure, which was not built to endure such high rates of power supplies, as air conditioning sales all over the country have increased.
To find out more about Kahrabtak, visit: http://www.kahrabtak.com
Egypt has been suffering from power cuts for several days now, and Kahrabtak is hoping to help the citizens, not in necessarily finding a solution, but rather the source of the problem.
The team behind Kahrabtak is the same team that was behind Morsimeter.com – a website monitoring the achievements of the first elected Egyptian president in his first 100 days of power. “We are a bunch of young people, interested in technology and in the process of collecting and distributing information, without any political affiliation or direction,” Amr Sobhy (24), one of the team’s founding members, explained.
The website, Facebook group, Twitter hashtag and application of Kahrabtak were launched on Sunday, 12th of August 2012 – right after the power shortages became a serious problem and people started talking about it. Already today, the Facebook group has over 1,100 members so far.
“Usually, we - as citizens - cannot evaluate and determine the source of a problem in our country. We know the electricity goes out, but we do not know if there is a pattern, or who is most affected by it, and such information is crucial in order to be able to deal with the situation,” Sobhy explains. “Maybe if we find a pattern, things will become clearer.”
Last week, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil released a statement, telling families to help in solving the problem of power shortages by wearing “cotton clothes and sitting in one room”. A lot of criticism has been directed at him for that via social networks.
Some believe that the main source of the problem is the inefficient infrastructure, which was not built to endure such high rates of power supplies, as air conditioning sales all over the country have increased.
To find out more about Kahrabtak, visit: http://www.kahrabtak.com