SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Sulaimani emergency center ambulances suspended half of their operations due to fuel shortage after the government’s failure to provide it, a director on Sunday told Esta Media Network.
In a phone call conversation director of Sulaimani emergency center, Saman Nadr told Esta that the center has suspended half of its operations except for certain emergency cases due to a lack of fuel and gasoline for the ambulances.
“The emergency center has suspended 50 percent of its operations caused by the fuel shortage, and non-providing of needed financial allocations,” Nadr said.
The director also mentioned the suspended operations, saying the patient transferring, and body transferring services, including further parts of the center’s operations being suspended.
“The ambulance transferring service is only available for certain emergency cases such as traffic accidents and sudden emergency cases” Nadr added.
Sulaimani governorate has repeatedly suffered from emergency services outages, particularly in the health sector after the Kurdistan Region government failed to provide the financial allocations.
Shortages of medicine and medical equipment have emerged as well since last year after the government failed to provide financial entitlements to the companies supplying medicine to the province.
Pharmaceutical companies on February 16 threatened they would halt the supply of medicine to the directorate of health in Sulaimani due to the accumulation of debts on the Kurdish government.
The Kurdistan Regional Government owes the companies over 20 billion Iraqi dinars, according to the pharma companies.
