By John Mathews - Arab Times Daily Kuwait
KUWAIT CITY: The Minister of Energy says the current water crisis will end in two weeks, but some of Kuwait’s residents are not sure and feel it is here to stay from some more time. Many pockets of Abbassiya, Hassawi, Hawally, Khaitan and Salmiya are hit by this crisis. In an effort to gauge the feelings of the ‘scarcity scarred’ residents, the Arab Times spoke to a few of them. “The onset of summer is not only about sizzling day temperatures but it also gives us sleepless nights,” says Catherine D’Souza, a Salmiya housewife. Her day begins at 3.30 am when the rest of her family is fast asleep and she gets straight to her stint — filling up water in huge plastic containers, which fills up most of the space in the dilapidated bathroom and there are few of them lined up in kitchen too.
The water supply in our building has been notorious for its truant behavior for quiet some time and now it is pathetic, she complains. The most likely time of its arrival is in the early morning hours and hence her early rising. And with the shortage looming large, her woes and her early waking is likely to continue. Shaji, an Abbassiya resident working in an automotive company too aired similar grievances. The water supply in our locality is just once a day — in the morning between 6 to 9 am and we consider ourselves lucky if water trickles from the taps in the evening time.
“Our overhead tank is filled by the motor attached to the ministry pipe and unlike most of the other buildings , we don’t have an underground water storage tank,” he said. “Our harris is plain lazy and he is fast asleep when the ministry supply is on in early morning, and by the time he switches it on the supply is half way through” Shaji went on. He rues the fact that he couldn’t get leave to go on vacation. “Those who went are indeed lucky, at least they do not have to battle with this kind of problem,” he quipped.
“Its been like pretty much like living in a refugee camp — making do with so little water. It doesn’t suffice even for the our daily ablutions,” bemoans, Gladis, a Filipino nurse living in Farwaniya. She is even more rankled by the fact that the villas across street appears to have uninterrupted supply of water. “I can see the maids there watering the lawns and the cars are washed everyday, and in our building it comes for 2 hours and that too in a slow trickle,” she said, in a sarcastic vein. “The harris says there is little water in ministry line and with this talk of overall scarcity we have to believe him,” she avers.
An employee working in a five-star hotel told the newspaper that even the hotel had to face acute shortage of water for over two weeks. “We had to rely on water tankers to meet our requirements, 25 tankers a day — something unheard of in our hotel,” he said. Many residents in Abbasiyya buildings too are pooling money ( KD 5 per flat) and requisitioning the services of water tankers to tide over the shortage.