Reuters : Summer in Baghdad - power cuts and dry taps

Summer in Baghdad - power cuts and dry taps

By Wisam Mohammed and Aws Qusay | August 3, 2007

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad's residents are miserable in the scorching heat of summer. There is not enough electricity to power air conditioners and taps in large parts of the Iraqi capital have run dry.

Surviving summer is always a challenge for residents in a city whose crumbling infrastructure has been difficult to repair and maintain amid the daily car bombings and shootings that have derailed Iraq's reconstruction.

The 50 degree Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures drop only a few degrees at night. Power from the national electricity grid is too feeble to run air conditioners so many people resort to sleeping on their roofs to escape the baking heat of their homes. But that offers little respite.

Water shortages in Baghdad are nothing new, particularly in the Shi'ite districts on the eastern side of the Tigris River that were neglected under Saddam Hussein's rule. But now a large part of the capital's mainly Sunni Arab west has also dried up.

Residents in western Baghdad, known as Kharkh, said they had been without water for about four days and were having to buy bottled drinking water, an additional expense that many poorly paid Iraqis can ill-afford. They are already struggling with the high cost of diesel for their home generators.

At night, water from an emergency reservoir trickles out of the taps for one or two hours. Kharkh residents have to stay awake to switch on their electrical pumps to boost the water flow and try to fill their tanks before the taps run dry again.

"I live with five brothers. When the water comes in we stand in a queue waiting to take a shower," said Ali Musa, a security guard from the al-Hurriya district in western Baghdad. "It is a miserable life but we have to be patient."

Residents help each other out. Those with wells share water with neighbors. People with buckets are a common sight.

The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50 per cent to 70 percent since 2003, while 80 per cent lack effective sanitation, British charity Oxfam said in a report last month.

INSURGENT ATTACKS

Muna Joseph, a middle-aged woman who lives near Baghdad's central Karrada district, said she had not had water for three days. "Water is one of our simplest rights but always there is a water crisis. We want to live a normal life, we are human."

The man in charge of Baghdad's water supply, Sadiq Shumari, blamed the water shortages on insurgents who had cut power lines between the main water purification plant in Khark's Tarmiya district and a major electricity station in Salahuddin Province.

"Usually the water shortages are focused in Rusafa (eastern Baghdad) and Karkh is fine because of the water plant. But now the water shortage has hit dangerously high levels," he said.

Officials were trying to improve security at the plant and repair the electricity lines, he said, but the danger of insurgent attack, which has already forced international organizations to quit work there, remained.

He noted that Baghdad generally suffered water shortages because its 6 million inhabitants needed 3.5 million cubic meters a day but only 2.1 million was being generated. Water consumption also shot up during the summer months.

Noah Miller, spokesman for reconstruction at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, said the water shortages were due to a nationwide power cut on Wednesday and possible leakages in water pipes due to old equipment or illegal tapping.

"You need electricity to power the water treatment plants which purify and pump out water to households. What happened on Wednesday was a blackout across Iraq which caused the network to fall down," he explained.

The network was now almost back up to pre-Wednesday levels.

Baghdad has about one or two hours of electricity a day and most residents rely on neighborhood generators and smaller diesel-powered machines to supplement the supply.

"We don't know what we should spend our salaries on -- electricity, diesel, food, medicine and now water. This is all burdening us," said east Baghdad resident Hashem Aboudi, 62.

(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin)

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