Yemenis left jobless by war turn to cold water and solar panels to survive

Among the ashes of Sanaa's pre-war economy, entrepreneurial residents are spying new opportunities to make money, reports Mohamed Al Qalisi.

Many Sanaa residents have had to turn their hand at other trades after an escalation in the country's conflict forced many small businesses in the capital to close, leaving their workers jobless. MohaShow more

SANAA // Three months has proved a lifetime for the small businesses in Yemen’s capital. Since the country’s conflict escalated in March, previously thriving companies from across the spectrum have been forced to close, leaving their employees jobless.

But among the ashes of Sanaa’s pre-war economy, entrepreneurial Yemenis are spying new opportunities for making money.

One such person is 28-year-old Nashwan Al Haj, the manager of an advertising agency named Al Baz.

Al Baz had 25 staff, all with university degrees in different fields, but with no need of advertising during wartime the work soon dried up and the company went bankrupt. All but five employees were let go.

“We [the remaining employees] were forced to look for alternative work,” said Mr Al Haj, who has a degree in administration. “Finally I thought of selling cold water, and it was a good idea.”

And so, four weeks ago, Mr Al Haj and his co-workers launched Al Baz into the chilled water market in Sanaa, where residents drink only bottled water because the tap water is not safe.

Finding chilled water to sell, however, was no easy task.

Since the middle of April, when clashes between Houthi rebels and tribesmen in Marib province damaged a pipeline supplying oil to Sanaa, the capital’s own power stations have been able to provide only two hours of electricity a day.

Added to this was the problem that Mr Al Haj and the other Al Baz employees did not own fridges.

Instead, he said, they bought bottles of chilled water from food storage companies that have big freezer rooms, along with blocks of ice to keep the bottles cold.

“I cannot say that we enjoy work more now, but now we can live from this work,” he said.

With temperatures in Sanaa now reaching highs of 31°C and the electricity shortages making it difficult to keep food and drink chilled, the price of a 750 millilitre bottle of cold water has risen from 80 Yemeni rial (Dh1.36) to 150 rials.

Even so, “we cannot earn more than 8,000 rials a day”, Mr Al Haj said. Between five of them, that works out to about half the average monthly salary of 80,000 rials that Al Baz paid its employees when it was in advertising.

To boost income, the company’s founder, Osama Al Thulaya, last week decided to branch out into solar energy, selling solar panels imported into Yemen by one of his friends.

"The two things most in demand nowadays are cold water and solar energy, so I decided to sell solar energy in addition to water to help us to earn more," he told The National.

Mr Al Thulaya, who also has a job as an administrative assistant in the information technology faculty at Sanaa University, believes people should do anything they can to overcome difficulties that face them.

It is normal during economic crises for people to seek alternative ways to survive, said Ahmed Shamakh, a political analyst who used to work at Yemen’s central bank.

“The most important thing for people right now is to have a source of income. They do not care if it is near or far from their speciality – we see university graduates selling qat or driving taxis,” he said.

Yemen’s conflict has added greatly to its already high number of unemployed people, so only the really driven can survive. Most of those who have lost their jobs have not found alternative work, and if the crisis lasts for a few months longer, many people will be in seroius difficulty, Mr Shamakh said.

Thousands have already left the capital for their home provinces after their companies shut down.

Maher Al Faqeeh, 34, was an accountant for Jordanian Airlines but is now out of work because of the air travel ban following the launch of Saudi-led airstrikes against the Houthis in late March.

He left Sanaa in late April with his wife and three children, and now sells vegetables in his village of Al Rokz in Taez province.

"I worked for Jordan Airlines for seven years and I have no experience in other work, so I left Sanaa as I could not eke out a livelihood," Mr Al Faqeeh told The N ational.

“I still had money that I saved during the past years, but I did not want to finish it – then I would become bankrupt. So I decided to use it for trading in vegetables.”

Because so many residents of Sanaa and other cities have fled to rural areas, Mr Al Faqeeh’s village, like many others, is full of jobless people.

This has made for tough competition among traders. Mr Al Faqeeh said he earns barely 1,000 rials a day from selling vegetables.

However, “this is the only solution that I am forced to do until our country can lift the crisis,” he said.