Moroni residents queue before dawn as Comoros water taps run dry

Residents of Moroni, the capital of the Comoros, are queuing before dawn or paying for private deliveries as piped water supplies fail for weeks at a time.

Ben Joma, an 86-year-old retired printer in the Zilimadjou neighbourhood, told AFP his taps provide water only about every three weeks, and then only as a thin flow for about an hour. He said neighbours call each other when water starts running so they can fill containers.

Joma said he had just received a 1,000-litre water delivery costing the equivalent of about $28. The National Institute of Statistics says 45 percent of the Comoros population lives below the poverty line of $100 a month.

Private supplier Chaher Omar said he queues between midnight and 2:00 am at the Vouvouni pumping station, which supplies Moroni, but sometimes leaves without filling his jerrycans and 1,000-litre tank. He said demand is high because it is the dry season.

Kaouthara Bouchrane, a mother of four in southern Moroni, said her taps had been dry for months despite being a customer of the national water company Sonede. She said she wakes well before dawn to queue at a communal water point and must buy water if she cannot fill her containers.

Bakri El Yahya, a representative of the Progeau water access programme, said the Vouvouni pumping station was designed in the late 1970s, when Moroni’s population was less than a quarter of today’s level. He said insufficient electricity means the station operates for about 10 hours a day, and that leaks mean half the pumped water goes back into the ground before reaching customers.

Sonede said repair work was under way, including efforts to remove airlocks. Technical director Abdillah Mze Ali said a 17.5-million-euro World Bank-funded project was due to start within four years to drill new boreholes, revamp the Moroni network and build two large reservoirs.