The 60-megawatt plant, to be completed in 21 months, is part of several projects the Japanese government has pledged to undertake in the impoverished city.
The Governor of the southern Province of Muthana Mohammed Ali publicly thanked Tokyo for efforts to develop Samawa. Samawa is the provincial capital and home to nearly 200,000 people.
“In the name of the people of Samawa we thank the Japanese leadership and are looking forward for more development projects,” Ali Said.
Japan is reported to have pledged to end power shortages in the province and will construct two more power plants each with 25-megawatt capacity, the governor told a cheering crowd.
Samawa’s most famous attraction is the ancient city of Urkuk, the largest Sumerian capital which flourished in southern Iraq in about 2,500 B.C.
Archaeologists say the ancient city saw the birth of the first written scripts in human history.
The former region had turned Samawa into a cement manufacturing center where it constructed some of the largest cement factories in the region.
But the factories have fallen into disrepair.
The city has also lost its attraction as a tourist center when its tourist facilities along the shores of the magnificent Samawa Lake were plundered in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion.(Source) Azzaman
