Water crisis in various parts of Sudan

Residents of four villages in Abu Jubaiha in South Kordofan are facing a severe drinking water crisis. People in eastern Sudan’s Sennar and El Gedaref are complaining about thirst as well. Khartoum plans to significantly improve the water supply in Red Sea state

On Sunday, a listener told Radio Dabanga that the villages of Gereid, Um Saga, Sefeira, and El Tardiya are suffering from thirst for more than a month.

“It seems the ground water level has significantly declined, as there is hardly any water left in the wells,” he said.

He complained that many villagers now have to buy their drinking water from commercial tankers. “The price of a barrel of water lies between SDG 20 and SDG 30 ($4.50).”

Eastern Sudan

The people in El Dali and El Mazmum localities in Sennar are also suffering from thirst.

The area affected most is the administrative unit of Abu Areef. “For about a month, the people there have to make do with water distributed by tankers,” a resident of the area told this station.

He said that the provision of drinking water to the area of Bozi is cut off “because the water pump broke down last week”.

People of a number of districts in El Gedaref also complained of a shortage of drinking water “as a result of the ongoing supply cuts, in some districts for two weeks, and in other neighbourhoods for a month”.

A housewife reported from El Gedaref yesterday that the price of a barrel of water in the suburbs reached SDG 20 ($3). “Inside El Gedaref town, we pay SDG 17).

Radio Dabanga reported on Friday that not only dropping levels of ground water in Kassala, but also a lack of reserves in the state’s water reservoirs are causing a major water shortage these days.

'Zero Thirst'

The complaints of people living in Red Sea state about the recurrent water outages in the region may stop soon, as the federal Ministry of Finance signed an agreement last week for the installation of two water purification stations and the rehabilitation of four desalination seawater stations in the region.

The project, scheduled to be finished within 45 days, will cost SDG 72,400,000 ($10,728,300), Minister of Finance Badreldin Mahmoud told reporters in Khartoum.

The project is part of the Zero Thirst programme that targets social development in all states, especially in eastern Sudan, he said.