Police disperse new protest against water outages in Port Sudan

Port Sudan, the capital of eastern Sudan’s Red Sea state, witnessed major security measures on Friday to stop protesters from reaching the residence of the state governor.

“Security and police forces blocked the roads leading to the governor’s house in anticipation of a large protest from the residents of the El Matar and El Mirghaniya districts in southern Port Sudan against continuing, often day-long water outages,” journalist Osman Hashim reported.

“The police dispersed the demonstrators,” he told Radio Dabanga on Friday. “A delegation went to the offices of the governor to hand a memorandum demanding an end to the outages, but the officials refused to receive the request.”

Hashim said that the state government “seems to have renounced its previous promises to the people of the El Matar and El Mirghaniya districts to restore the provision of drinking water”.

He pointed to the women’s protest last week, and said he expects the demonstrations to continue, “as the state government has failed miserably to provide basic services to the people. They are now forced to buy water from donkey carts for high prices.

“For months now, the city has suffered from an unprecedented rise in temperature, a water crisis, and power cuts,” he said.

The journalist further reported that three people died of sunstroke in the Dugna Hospital in Port Sudan on Thursday.

“Last week, a child died of sunstroke as well,” he noted. “If the heat continues, we may expect more deaths in Port Sudan, Ousef, and Mohamed Goul.”