No clean drinking water in South Darfur capital; Nyala Stock Exchange reopened

People living in the capital of South Darfur are getting sick from drinking polluted water, caused by the battles that took place in the city from end April until October 26, when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of Nyala. Yesterday, the Nyala Stock Exchange officially resumed its work.

Unofficial reports say that the battles between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in the South Darfur capital, which lasted about six months, left more than 2,000 civilians and soldiers dead, and that it was often too dangerous to bury the bodies downtown, near Wadi Burlei, which runs through the city, and is its main water source.

Badreldin Abdallah told Radio Dabanga from Nyala that the Red Crescent Society “has worked hard to distribute chlorine to the owners of water tanks transporting water to the neighbourhoods, but they often do not add it to the water.

Mohamed El Sanousi, health coordinator of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society in South Darfur, told Radio Dabanga that they started chlorinating the water in Nyala some time ago, “but we faced quite some challenges”.

Sellers of water bottles do not always use chlorine because the people themselves reject the smell of chlorine, he explained “And owners of water tankers believe that chlorine causes iron corrosion, so they refuse to use it.”

The health coordinator said that that the drinking of polluted water in the city began to show its effects. “More and more people complain of stomach problems, typhoid fevers, kidney and urinary tract infections, and other diseases.”

The water safety officer at the Sudanese Red Crescent Society in the state, Salma Adam, attributed the water pollution to “the lack of water purification mechanisms and institutions concerned with such operations, in addition to the accumulation of waste in the city and the many bodies lying near water sources. The rainy season only exacerbated the situation.”

Stock exchange

After a hiatus of more than eight months, the Nyala Stock Exchange resumed its work yesterday.

Salah El Mowaj, secretary-general of the South Darfur government and Col Saleh El Fouti, RSF commander in South Darfur, and a number of merchants and native administration leaders attended the re-opening ceremony.

During his speech on the occasion, El Mowaj appealed to all employees of the South Darfur state institutions to return to their offices and “run the civil work wheel and help normalise life” in the city.

He also called for the formation of consultative committees to support and rebuild the state’s infrastructure destroyed by the fighting.

RSF Col Saleh El Fouti pledged to provide security conditions that enable the Nyala Stock Exchange to perform its tasks.