Water represents challenge to Yemen

SANA'A, Aug. 13 (Saba)- Water and Environment Minister Abdul Rahman
al-Eryani has said that there are government endeavors to address
the water situation in Yemen through creating a legal protection
that is not influenced by political variables.

In an interview with the state-run newspaper 26september, the
Minister said that water section represents the biggest challenge to
Yemen and its people's future, affirming that the government is
currently studying different ways of resolving many problems facing
the water sector in the waste county.

"Rigs in Yemen are more than ten doubles of the ones existing in
India and pose a danger such as the danger of the carrying of arms
in the country", said al-Eryani.

"The biggest problem we are suffering in Yemen is the collapse of
groundwater level and pollution. For facing this problem, we took a
number of legal procedures, including stopping any indiscriminate
drilling, corruption and temptations, which provides for the
drilling of more wells".

The Minister accused some senior officials in the government and
some rich persons of offending violating the laws when they allow
drilling many wells lawlessly.

"About 91 per cent of the water consumption in the country goes to
agriculture, while industrial and domestic consumption does not
exceed 10 per cent", he said, "the Sana'a basin water is the biggest
problem in Yemen and poses a threat to the capital Sana'a. It is one
of the basins vulnerable to drying and the options of resolving this
problem are very limited and very expensive. So we are preparing to
hold a national conference for discussing the eligibility of who
should have the groundwater in Yemen".

Remembering when he visited Sana'a in the 1960s, al-Eryani said that
people were finding out water after digging 10-15 meters, "today we
drill 1200 meters in the Sana'a basin. We miss one meter of
groundwater per year and thus eventually the basin will be drained.

"Yemeni formers use about 40 per cent of the Sana'a basin water to
plant qat, while 12 per cent of the water is used for industrial and
household purposes".

"About 260 million cubic meters are consumed annually of the Sana'a
basin, but the renewed water does not exceed 100 million cubic
meters" accounted al-Eryani, "this means that we withdraw yearly 160
million cubic meters of groundwater from the balance of our
generations".

YA