Water Shortage Force People to Desert Their Village [Archives:2000/46/Culture]

Researches have been made this year show that Sana’a is threatened with severe drought. Numbers given in those researches were horrific to the extent heralding the occurrence of a real catastrophe. May be the increasing water problem in Al-shurfa 90km to the east of Sana’a is a real warning that a water problem is about to happen.
A mere coincidence led me to know about water crisis in that area when I met one of my friends from Al-shurfa. And after a detailed discussion with him, I decided to go there to see with my own eyes what’s the situation like over there.
On our way to Al-shurfa villages we noticed that all grape farms on both sides of the road to Al-shurfa were dry and trees were only good for fire wood.
Mr. Abdulla Saleh Al-rajami told us that 95 families migrated from their homes to work in Sana’a, Aljaof or Mareb because of water shortage which made them unable to irrigate their lands anymore, and there are about 700 other families intend to immigrate ” what’s the use of staying without water” , one of the farmers said, who used to receive about 500 thousand Riyals for selling grapes each year in addition to grains and qat.
  Farmer Saleh Abu Saleh Wathab said ” until 1996 there was no water problem, we had about 17 wells which all farmers shared. Water was found at a depth of 60 meters. In the next four years, rain has been very little and the wells became dry, water couldn’t be found even at depths of 200 meters and more which affected badly all farms.”
He added” I have about 132000 square meters of land, 39600 of which were planted with grapes, I only managed to save one third of it. Some farmers raised money and bought one tank of water to irrigate their farms; others couldn’t buy any water tanks so they left their lands to work somewhere else.”Farmer Saleh Ali said ” I’ve spent 800 thousand Riyals on irrigating my grape trees this year from which I only received 320 thousand as a revenue of selling. I don’t intend to do the same this year and if we are going to have no rain, I’ll leave. We haven’t noticed any cooperation from the government to help solving even part of the problem”Mr. Hadi Ahmed Awanah said” the least amount of money spent on buying water is 9 thousand Riyals per family.”About their demands for drinking water, Mr. Hadi Ahmed said” we did, in 1985 Mr. Ahmed Ali Almatari came from Sana’a accompanied by a group of people and laid the foundation stone for a drinking water project , a health unit and a school but nothing of these ever been made.”We met Mr. Mohammed Al-rijami who had two water pumps, he said” I sold water for 26 million Riyals this year.”A paper presented by the general corporation of water resources stressed that the stored amount of water in Sana’a basin will be consumed in the early years of this century and to provide 100 million cubic meters of water we will need about 692 million dollars as construction cost, 224 million dollars as working cost for 15 years and 100 million dollars as annual cost.
With the increasing number of people of Yemen the demand for water will increase in the next few years but Yemen is already suffering a great deal so how could Yemen meet the increasing demands for water. God knows.


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