With another $200 million awarded recently for work on Iraq’s electrical infrastructure, roughly $5 billion of American money has gone toward reconstruction in the battered country.

The Program Management Office awarded the contracts to an Italian and an American firm to work on procurement, delivery, and installations of electrical generators throughout the Iraq.

The PMO is a department within the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq that distributes the $18.4 billion allocated by Congress last November.

Of the $5 billion awarded so far, the PMO says about $2 billion worth of work is actually under way. More than 7,000 Iraqis are being employed on various projects every day.

The head of the PMO, retired Admiral David Nash, said between $50 million and $75 million is spent on new projects each week.

“That means the actual physical construction is complete as we move forward,” he said at a briefing. “And that will pick up as time goes by, as we get more and more of these projects going.”

The PMO predicts another $5 billion in contracts will be awarded by July 1.

The head of the CPA, L. Paul Bremer, prodded an acceleration of the reconstruction in April. Mr. Bremer wanted to see more of the funds used to employ Iraqis to help combat the chronic unemployment that most estimates peg at more than 50%.

Admiral Nash said that effort is paying off.

“What he’s asked us to do is to pull together all the things that were going on in certain governates, certain cities, to try to integrate what we’re doing so it makes a major impact on the people of the town of the governate,” he said.

The accelerated program targets getting Iraqis to work in seven major cities including Baghdad, Mosul, and Ramadi. Projects earmarked for funding include building bridges to improve commerce, creating potable water, improving sewage systems, and removing trash and rubble.

Admiral Nash recently completed a tour of all 18 of Iraqi’s provinces, known as governates. He met with military commanders and tribal leaders to learn the best way to get the reconstruction money into the hands of Iraqi workers.

“That’s going very well,” he said. “We have Iraqis (back) to work, and it goes from home loan programs – which doesn’t sound like construction but nevertheless is employing people – all the way to sewage treatment facilities and sewage treatment piping.”

Admiral Nash said security of the workers is a concern as terrorists constantly take aim at Iraqis and foreign contractors who are trying to rebuild the country.

“But people still come to work,” he said. “And we’re still building.”