Nouakchott People Complain of Thirst, Urge Govt to Solve Water Crisis
(AWP) - Residents of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott called on the government authorities to work on supplying drinking water as they suffered acute shortage during the past days.
The government pledged to find a solution, blamed by Minister of Water and Sanitation Ismail Ould Abdel Vettah on the “accumulated silt in the river waters due to heavy rains, which reduced the drinking water production from 130,000 to 70,000 cubic meters per day.”
“I am telling the ministry that we have been thirsty for three days. No water is supplied here. We place the bottle under the faucet in the early morning in the hope of getting a drop of water, but nothing comes. We are now using bottled water. I own a store. We are using bottled water because the faucet water does not exist, even though we pay water bills. Nine and ten days go by and we do not get any water. Sometimes, water comes in trickles,” Imam Mohamed Khoun, a Mauritanian citizen, said.
A Mauritanian woman, Maryam Toure, said thirst goes on here for six days, adding, “We are thirsty, and we only get water from a very far place. Thirst continues and the people get the water from remote spots.”
Ibrahim Val Mohameden, a citizen in Nouakchott, said “We are thirsty and have had no water for a week. Sometimes, water is supplied for only one night. We fill only 10 bottles and then it stops again. We ask them to provide us with another resource of water. We cannot settle in this area at all. We want our voices heard by the company, the state and the institutions.”
Another Mauritanian woman, Maymouna Mint Val, said “We complain of thirst. We are like that for days. We live in haphazard districts, and we complain of thirst in the true sense of the word.”
For his part, Mauritanian Minister of Water and Sanitation Ismail Ould Abdel Vettah offered an apology to the citizens for this crisis.
“I apologize to all Mauritanian citizens, whether in Nouakchott or elsewhere. There are thirst problems, particularly the cities. I also apologize to all people in major and small villages. We will be working on easing their suffering,” he said.
Abdel Vettah said his ministry is working on distributing the currently-produced water in equal and fair shares among all districts of the capital city.
“The water sector has filled a fleet of tanks as a temporary solution to meet the citizens’ needs in all areas that are not covered in the water distribution network,” the minister added.