North Darfur militiamen halt water for Sortony

On Sunday, militiamen imposed passage fees on tankers bringing water to thousands of displaced in the Sortony camp in Kabkabiya locality in North Darfur.

The coordinator of the Kabkabiya camps fro the displaced told Radio Dabanga that militiamen prevented water tankers from reaching Sortony camp on Sunday.

He said that the militiamen demanded passage fees of SDG100 ($16) from each vehicle on the road between Sortony and the area of Kube, where the tankers get the water from.

When the tankers refused to pay, they were halted, Unamid vehicles were exempted from paying the fees, the coordinator said.

He strongly denounced the fees imposed, and demanded from the North Darfur authorities to intervene and “put an end to the excesses of militiamen in Darfur”.

Increase of 30 per cent

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan reported in its bulletin last week that the water provided to the 21,536 people sheltering in Sortony camp increased with 30 per cent during the week before.

The governmental Water and Environmental Sanitation Department (WES), supported by the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) and Oxfam America, provided 1,244,000 litres of water to the displaced from Jebel Marra in Sortony.

The increase was a result of two more water tankers hired by WES and Unicef to supply water from Kube to Sortony. In addition, the displaced have access to 30,000 litres every day from local boreholes, making the total amount of water available 1,454,000 litres. This makes the current water supply level in Sortony 9.7 litres per person per day, OCHA reported.