Iraq 10 years on: Are the taps flowing?
BAGHDAD/DUBAI, 22 April 2013 (IRIN) - For much of the
past decade, Iraqis have cursed about two things: 'maya' and 'kahraba' - water
and electricity.
These are more than petty complaints; they have become a
benchmark by which Iraqis judge progress in their country. A recent survey by
the National Democratic Institute (NDI) [ http://www.ndi.org/files/NDI-Iraq%20-%20April%202012%20National%20Survey%20-%20Report.pdf
] found that 42
percent of 2,000 Iraqis surveyed considered basic services - like water and
electricity - among the top two concerns they want the current government to
address.
In 2011, more than one-quarter of the population had
access to water from the general network for less than two hours a day, and
nearly half the population rated the quality of water services in their area as
bad or very bad, according to the Iraq Knowledge Network (IKN) [ http://www.iauiraq.org/documents/1677/IKN_Introduction_en.pdf
], a survey of nearly 30,000 households
conducted by the Ministry of Planning's Central Statistics Organization,
the Kurdistan Regional Statistics Office and the UN.
According to the UN, most Iraqis have limited access to
clean water because of poor infrastructure maintenance and inadequate funding
of the water supply system. One-fifth of Iraqis relied on bottled water as
their main source of water, and only one-fifth of people had access to water
from the general network all day long, the 2011 IKN survey found. The state of
disrepair forced significant numbers of people into using river water, despite
the health risks, IRIN reported in 2007 [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report/70243/IRAQ-Water-shortage-leads-people-to-drink-from-rivers
].
Still, statistics appear to show that access to clean
water has improved in the last decade.
