Power, water outages in Sudan’s capitals since start of Ramadan

Khartoum, Omdurman, Ed Damazin, capital of Blue Nile state, and El Obeid in North Kordofan have been witnessing power and water outages since the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan on May 6.

“The power and water cuts include most of the town’s districts and the outages continue for more than one day in some neighbourhoods,” Abdelaziz Soreiba, leading member of the Alliance for Freedom and Change in Blue Nile, told Radio Dabanga.

He pointed out that the deterioration in the services is man-made, “by elements of the former regime”.

Various districts in Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum North have suffered from water cuts since last month. Some areas have been entirely devoid of drinking water since Wednesday, a resident of Riyad in eastern Khartoum told Radio Dabanga.

On social media, people suggest that the authorities are doing this on purpose “to break the intifada”.

A number of districts in the capital of North Kordofan have been witnessing a severe drinking water crisis for weeks.

An angry resident of El Obeid told this station that the commercial price of a barrel of water has risen from LE 40 to LE 100 “which doubled the suffering of the people”. He appealed to the state authorities to solve the water problem as soon as possible.

El Obeid sit-in

The sit-in in front of the military unit in El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan continued for the fourth week in a row.

Leading members of the Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC) told Radio Dabanga that the sit-in will continue until their full demands have been met. They pointed to the continued influx of protesters to the sit-in.

In Kassala, hundreds of people joined the sit-in in front of the 41st Brigade on Friday. A demonstrator reported that the protesters, consisting of many students and people of various professions, gathered in front of the Kassala Teaching Hospital and left for the sit-in at exactly 5 pm, and broke their fasting in front of the military unit.

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