residents living in Erbil city’s Badawa neighborhood protested on June 29, 2021 (NRT Digital Media/Screenshot)
2021-06-30
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SULAIMANI — On a day where temperatures hit some of the highest recorded this year, residents living in Erbil city’s Badawa neighborhood protested on Tuesday (June 29) against a prolonged cut to water service at their homes.
One demonstrator told NRT that the neighborhood has not had water for the last fifteen days, forcing residents of the low-income area to spend precious cash to purchase bottled water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and cooling.
He said that his family has spent 80,000 Iraqi dinars ($55) over the past three days to buy water, an expense that many of the other residents in the 200-home neighborhood cannot afford.
Another protester said that the government has not responded to their pleas for water service to be restored.
A third said that he took a shower in a park on his way home from work because there was no water at his house.
There have been acute water shortages in Erbil in recent days, as temperatures hit 42 C (107 F) on Tuesday, but the problems in Badawa echo the persistent and widespread complaints expressed by people across the Kurdistan Region about the poor state of public services, including water and electricity.
Government and party officials have long-promised to improve those systems, which are subject to frequent cuts and arbitrary outages, but have made little progress, particularly for those who cannot afford private alternatives.
(NRT Digital Media)