July 27 (SeeNews) - The Albanian government said it has decided to cut the working hours of the public administration as of Monday to avoid an energy crisis due to increased power demand in the heatwave that has gripped the country.
"The working hours are set from 0800 to 1300 local time [0700GMT- 1200GMT]," the government said in a statement, published on its website.
Temperatures across the Balkans jumped to record highs of 45 degrees Celcius in July.
Increased power consumption for air-conditioning and several damages in Albania's outdated transmission power system resulted in power cuts this week.
On Tuesday afternoon the whole country was left without electricity for two hours, Albania's power utility KESH said earlier.
To generate electricity the impoverished Balkan country relies mostly on its water resources. Some 95% of its electricity is produced by hydropower plants. However, there has been no rain for the past 50 days.
To save water resources and to meet the domestic demand, Albania imported an approximate 100,000 megawatthours (MWh) of electricity in June.
Last winter, also due to the dry summer, Albania suffered one of its worst energy crises with blackouts of up to 20.5 hours a day.
Since the beginning of last December KESH has spent more than 150 million euro on electricity imports. The country will import 1.5 million MWh of electricity at a total cost of up to 108.6 million euro ($148.33 million) to cover the domestic demand in the second half of 2007.
($=0.7322 euro)