20.000 people in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor without water
DEIR EZ-ZOR, Syria (North Press) – Residents of a village in the western countryside of Deir ez-Zor Governorate in eastern Syria are rationing in water usage to save some liters for additional one or two days so that they do not bear more costs to buy water from tanks.
Farida Ahmad, 45, who is from the village of Zaghir, west of Deir ez-Zor, has suffered from water outage for two months due to the complete halt of the water station pumping.
The villagers, who number 20.000, buy water from trucks which hold tanks filled with water from the Euphrates River at a price of 1.000 Syrian pounds (SYP) per barrel (1.000 liters), which equals to about $0.20.
Despite warnings of using polluted water of the Euphrates, the villagers have no choice and bring water from it.
Due to using polluted water, cholera cases were recorded in the areas located on the banks of the river.
According to Kheder al-Shimali, director of the Zaghir water station, the old and damaged engines of the station and the lack of supplies led to stop working.
Al-Shimali pointed out that they have started repairing the engines through cleaning them and removing damaged equipment for a month.
With the support of UNICEF, new equipment was installed.
The repairing work has not been completed due to the delay in the arrival of the required equipment which was imported from outside the areas of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), according to al-Shimali.
The director indicated that due to difficulty of procedures at the Semalka-Faysh Khabur border crossing between AANES areas and Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the arrival of equipment were delayed, where some of them are still at the crossing for more than 15 days.
The station officials had to replace most of the equipment, due to the damage caused which led them to be out of service.
Early in October, Ashraf al-Alyan, director of Water Foundation at the Services and Municipalities Board of Deir ez-Zor Civil Council of the AANES, revealed that they are unable to pay for repairing water stations.
Al-Alyan told North Press that due to high costs of repairing and lack of financial capabilities in the foundation, the working was negatively affected.
The 47-year-old, Khaled al-Ali is worried that the repairing process of the station will be delayed, especially since the costs of purchasing water have become an additional burden on him.
Ali said that he buys water for 20.000 SYP every few days, which is expensive in light of the deteriorating living situation and the prevailing high prices in the area.