While Libya's oil lies at the heart of three months of fighting over Tripol...
TRIPOLI - While Libya’s oil lies at the heart of three months of fighting over Tripoli and years of power struggles before that, water is becoming a far bigger concern for its people.
“Drinkable water is a daily issue for my family,” said Usama Mohamed Dokali, a cashier in a cafe in Tripoli, who buys bottled water when he can and gets it from a charity when his money runs out. Other people fill bottles from wells and hope for the best. If the damage does not get fixed, there could be a “sudden, unexpected, uncontrollable and un-prepared for” shutdown of the main water pipeline system, the water authority said in a March presentation to international organizations seen by Reuters.
“An estimated 4 million people would be deprived of access to safe water,” UNICEF Libya spokesman Mostafa Omar said by email, listing cholera, hepatitis A and diarrhea, a major childhood killer, as the likely result.Poor public services were one of the drivers of the uprising against Gaddafi, but a 4,000 km pipeline system known as the Great Man Made River was a world-leading civil engineering project when it was built in the 1980s.
People dismantle well heads to sell the copper and tribesmen living in the neglected south close or destroy pipes to press their demands with officials in the capital. Across Libya, demand has risen to 7 billion cubic meters annually, up from 5.5 billion in 2011, as farmers and others have drilled wells or tapped reservoirs, Sunni said. By 2025, Libya will need 8 billion.
Sunni said water quality had been affected by a lack of treatment, due to a shortage of funds for chemicals and equipment, and some officials agree with residents who say water in the taps is not fit to drink. Haftar, a former Gaddafi-era military commander, is allied to a parallel administration which has hired thousands of employees and fighters.
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