WUNRN
World Water Week 2009 - 16 – 22 August
YEMEN
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A girl
attempting to fill containers with the trickling water from a tap near an
artesian well outside Sanaa |
SANAA, 16 August 2009 (IRIN) - Water
and sanitation companies in
Urgent
action is needed to halt depletion of the country’s water resources, Abdulqader
Hanash, deputy minister for water affairs, told IRIN. Some 90 percent of
available water is used for agriculture, leaving just 10 percent for industrial
and household use, he said.
Specialists have said
before that 40 percent of
Hanash
explained that the ministry was taking steps to stop the proliferation of wells
which exacerbated groundwater depletion; it was also helping citizens to switch
to less water-dependent produce and farming techniques.
“We
expect the international community and donors to provide further funding to
allow the ministry to implement its water strategies,” he added.
A report
by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA) says
The
World Bank considers a country to be water scarce if there are less than 1,000
m³ of renewable internal freshwater resources available per capita.
The global average is
about 6,750 m³ of water per capita. All Arab countries bar
UNDP study
A UN
Development Programme (UNDP)
study of Arab countries in 2007 said Yemen had the second highest
percentage of population without access to safe water (after Comoros) - 33
percent - just over double the Arab average.
Environmental
specialist Mohammed al-Ariqi said
In
al-Ariqi’s book Water: Reality & Vision, al-Ariqi said
Worst province, city
Al-Beidha,
with a population of 300,000, is the country’s most water-scare province,
according to Mohammed al-Aidarous, a local councillor there. Water in al-Beidha
costs more because it takes three to four hours to transport it by truck from
the nearest water source. “The majority of the province’s artesian wells have
dried up because of frequent droughts coupled with excessive consumption by
farmers growing qat,” he said.
Abdulwahab
Almujahed, head of water and environment at the Social Fund for Development,
said that Taiz city suffers the worst water shortages in the country with
citizens receiving municipal water once every 45 days on average. Compounding
the shortages problem was the fact that having long intervals without water
running through the pipes causes contamination, he said.
“The Taiz-based
Local Water and Sanitation Corporation continues to connect more households to
an empty supply network. However, it should first look for water sources before
expanding the network,” Almujahed told IRIN. “The corporation should provide
tanks to citizens to harvest rainwater, which they can use during the drought
season.”
Almujahed
added that Dhamar, 100km south of Sanaa and with a population of nearly
120,000, has the cleanest water supply in
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Women and children collect
water from a tap at Al-Rahabi Mosque in Sanaa |
Price hikes
To get
a large truck-load of water (3,600 litres) delivered in Sanaa has gone up in
the past month from US$7.5 to US$12.5, according to Abdulkarim Al-Ghashm, an
employee at the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
“Our
household has received no water for 21 days, so I turned to buying water from
trucks… In the past month, I bought water four times, costing me YR10,000 [$50]
- nearly one-third of my monthly salary.”
Mahdi
al-Sukhaini, owner of an artesian well near al-Saleh mosque in Sanaa,
attributed the problem to severe drought: “Many artesian wells have dried up,”
he told IRIN.
He also
complained of a lack of fairness in the water rationing system, with some parts
of Sanaa not getting water for up to 15-20 days at a time.
Khalid
al-Kharbi, a water resources manager in the Sanaa-based Local Water and
Sanitation Corporation, admitted there was a problem, saying “houses near the
main tanks receive water at more frequent intervals than houses further away.”
He said
the company was looking at ways of alleviating the situation: the digging of
1,000-metre deep wells around the city, desalination projects in the Red Sea,
and tapping into new water sources in the Empty Quarter. The main problem in
all cases was lack of funding, he said.
“Thirty
years ago water was found in the Sanaa basin at a depth of 20-30 metres, but
now we have to go down 300-400 metres,” al-Kharbi said, warning that Sanaa
could run out of water in the next 15-20 years.
According
to al-Kharbi, only 52 percent of Sanaa’s two million people are connected to
the municipal water supply network.
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