{"id":16995,"date":"2025-01-04T19:04:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-04T17:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=16995"},"modified":"2026-10-24T15:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:02:17","slug":"aswan-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/aswan-4\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Banks of the Nile, Aswan Goes 12 Days Without Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few kilometres from Lake Nasser, which stores more than 164 billion cubic metres of Nile water, the people of Aswan governorate are facing an ongoing crisis of repeated water cuts lasting long periods, which in some areas have exceeded 12 consecutive days, while the authorities concerned are unable to offer solutions to the crisis despite residents’ continuing complaints to the water company, the local administrations and the governorate, all the way up to the Cabinet’s complaints system.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the last week of December of the past year, 2024, Aswan governorate has been experiencing an acute crisis<\/a> due to repeated water cuts, which worsened notably from last December, as thousands of families in several areas, such as El-Mahmoudiya, El-Sadaka El-Gedida and the Lotus district, suffered a complete cut-off of water, and very weak supply in other areas such as El-Akkad, Sadat Road and Sheikh Haroun. Despite repeated promises to resolve the crisis, the suffering continued for weeks, forcing many residents to leave their homes and take refuge with relatives in other places where water is available, especially during a season of holidays, exams and increased winter tourism activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zawia3 contacted citizens from the areas of (El-Mahmoudiya, El-Sadaka El-Gedida, El-Radwan, the El-Akkad district, El-Taawuniyat, Khazzan Road and Sadat Road), who confirmed in their conversations with us that water had been cut for a period exceeding 12 days in some areas. Despite official talk of the crisis being resolved, the people of Aswan tell us that the water has not come back and is still completely cut off in many areas, and in the areas where it has returned, it runs for only two hours, at a very weak level that is not enough to meet citizens’ basic needs. <\/span><\/p>\n

Journalist <\/span>Abdallah Meshaly<\/b>, a resident of the El-Mahmoudiya area in Aswan, comments: “Since the evening of Monday before last, we were surprised by a notice of a 12-hour water cut to connect the Lotus district area to the El-Mahmoudiya reservoir, but the water has not come back since then and all efforts to resolve the crisis have failed. Water was cut off from thousands of families and residential apartments, and it is also weak in many other areas such as El-Akkad, Sadat Road and Sheikh Haroun.” <\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “The matter required the intervention of the governorate and housing leadership, but to no avail. Water is still cut off in many places, especially on the floors from the second up to the sixth, and it only reached the ground floor, weakly. It has become unbelievable that the country of the Nile and the High Dam does not have a drop of water for thousands of families.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Meshaly continues: “This forced many to leave their homes and take refuge with their relatives in other places where water is available, because the current period is a period of holidays, exams and the winter tourist season. What gladdened our hearts was the decision by the Governor of Aswan, Ismail Kamal, to refer the entire crisis to the Public Prosecution to investigate those responsible for the failure among the officials of the governorate’s Drinking Water and Sanitation Company, at the same time as Aswan’s lawyers filed the first official complaint with the Public Prosecution against the Aswan Drinking Water Company.”<\/span><\/p>\n

A resident of the Sadat Road area, <\/span>Amira Saad<\/b>, explains that the water cut crisis began days ago, after the water company distributed an announcement saying that water would be cut in several areas in succession because of some maintenance works aimed at connecting the Distinguished Housing buildings in the Lotus district, and isolating and treating leaks at the El-Mahmoudiya reservoir. Since then, the water has been cut completely, without adherence to the schedule or a date being set for things to return to normal. <\/span><\/p>\n

She adds, speaking to us: “We contacted officials to no avail; the numbers designated for receiving water complaints in the governorate do not answer, so we contacted the Presidency of the Cabinet and submitted a complaint bearing the number (9226568), but the problem has not been solved, and all the news circulated by the official bodies is contradictory and untrue. Two days ago, we followed the deputy governor’s apology for the water cut and his promise to resolve the crisis, but to no avail. The truth is that we are living without water, and we want the crisis resolved and not repeated, because the situation may turn into a disaster.” <\/span><\/p>\n

From the El-Mahmoudiya area, <\/span>Mohamed Saad<\/b> says: “We are suffering from an almost complete water cut. We have addressed officials more than once, but to no avail, and the promises to solve the problem are still ink on paper. Over the past two days, at the end of the week, some officials informed us that the crisis had been resolved, but that has not happened; until this moment, the water has not reached us.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “The situation has become unbearable. We are forced to buy water from mobile tankers at very high prices, or we buy mineral water, whose price is also high because of the increased demand for it, and this is beyond our financial means. The water we get is barely enough for drinking and cooking, while washing and cleaning have become almost impossible tasks, and the children are suffering because of the water shortage. We do not know when this crisis will end. We have come to live in a daily state of emergency, as if we were in a desert, and what we want is a specific date and clear measures to end this crisis and avoid its recurrence.” <\/span><\/p>\n

In a related context, <\/span>Fatma Ezzat,<\/b> a resident of the El-Sadaka El-Gedida area, says that “the crisis in the El-Sadaka El-Gedida area is not much different from the other areas. The water has been cut for many days, and the water that reaches us from the ground tanks is polluted and unfit for human use. We struggle to secure basic needs such as bathing and washing clothes. The neighbours cooperate to buy water, but the cost has become a great burden on all of us. We asked the water company to intervene, but the response is always that there are technical faults being repaired. We do not want promises; we want a real and quick solution.”<\/span><\/p>\n

A resident of Khazzan Road, <\/span>Mostafa Abdel Razek, <\/b>believes that the crisis is a clear result of the corruption, nepotism and bribery that have permeated the water authority. He affirms, speaking to us, that the absence of competencies and poor management are the real reason behind this crisis, and that negligence has come to strike the joints of the entire authority, and public funds are embezzled without oversight, while we live without water and without dignity. <\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “The whole of Khazzan Road has had no water for the eighth day in a row, and the situation has become unbearable. We are suffering from a complete water cut, and our most basic rights as human beings are violated daily.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Ahmed Abdel Mawgoud, a resident of the El-Radwan area, agrees with him, and says that “the infrastructure of the water network has completely deteriorated, and all the utilities have fallen into a pitiful state and need comprehensive renewal, but there is no sufficient budget for that, while corruption is rampant, which keeps the crisis going and moving from one place to another. We are living in a whirlpool of endless problems, and we see no realistic solutions or intervention from officials; things are getting worse day after day.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the El-Akkad district, <\/span>Mahmoud El-Sayed<\/b> describes the situation: “We are not talking about a simple cut, but about a complete absence of water for more than a week. We go daily to the neighbouring areas to fill water containers. People here are very angry, but their anger finds no one to listen to it. The negligence on the part of officials makes us feel let down. Don’t they realise that life stops without water?”<\/span><\/p>\n

From the Khazzan Road area, <\/span>Nadia Hussein<\/b> says: “No one could believe that we live in Aswan, the city known for its pure water, and that we are now deprived of it. The families here on Khazzan Road cannot find water for drinking or cooking, and some residents have started relying on unsafe water, which threatens their health. We asked officials for help, but the response is always that there are technical faults being repaired. How long will we wait? Our lives and our health are in danger because of this clear negligence.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Aswan: A Deadly Heatwave Claims Dozens of Lives amid Power Cuts<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Causes of the Crisis<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The MP for Aswan governorate in parliament, <\/span>Reham Abdel Nabi<\/b>, attributes the recurrence of the water cut crisis in the governorate to several causes, the most important of which are: the deterioration of the network’s infrastructure and the failure to carry out periodic maintenance, in addition to the unavailability of spare parts or the tools needed for maintenance and having to request them from Cairo every time a crisis occurs, which takes longer and prolongs the crisis. Besides that, those in charge of the work locally, within the water company’s branch in Aswan, foremost among them the acting head of the company in the governorate, lack the technical capabilities that would qualify them to deal with such crises and act quickly to resolve them or to inform the central leadership in Cairo, which also causes them to worsen. <\/span><\/p>\n

The MP tells Zawia3 that the infrastructure needs urgent development, as it has not been fully developed within the governorate since 2011. In addition, in recent years the governorate has been bearing a greater population density because it hosts large numbers of our Sudanese brethren, so it is necessary to work on developing the networks to accommodate the high population density. <\/span><\/p>\n

She adds: “In light of this, we submitted an urgent plan to develop the infrastructure of the water network in Aswan to the Minister of Housing, Sherif El-Sherbiny, who showed cooperation on this file and assigned one of the ministry’s advisers to examine it urgently and to provide a special budget line to cover its required cost. Work on the development file has indeed begun, and the head of the Holding Company for Water, Mamdouh Raslan, is following up on the mechanisms for resolving the crisis and has been present in Aswan for several days.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She continues: “The pipeline and the water pumps have indeed been changed, and the crisis is almost over, but the flow of water is still unbalanced and has not reached all areas regularly. The reason for this is the large air pressure inside the pipelines, which are about 12 kilometres long, and work is now under way to release it. Meanwhile, the water is being turned on in rotation across several areas, and it arrives weak in most of them. What is being worked on now is releasing all the air and completing all the maintenance works to ensure that water reaches all areas regularly, in the hope that this will happen soon.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Reham had submitted, at the beginning of last week, an urgent statement on the crisis to the House of Representatives, in which she said that Aswan, the land of the Nile and the High Dam, had been suffering from water cuts for eight days, affirming that the governorate had not seen any infrastructure development since 2011. She called for urgent solutions to the crisis, stressing the need to allocate about one billion pounds to the governorate to save its people from thirst. She also called for the formation of a fact-finding committee from the House of Representatives to determine the causes of the problem and take quick measures to address it, especially in light of the deteriorating infrastructure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A
A picture of the urgent statement submitted by MP Reham Abdel Nabi to the House of Representatives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>The Water Crisis Worsens in Egypt: Repeated Cuts and Rising Prices<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Complaint to the Public Prosecution <\/b><\/h1>\n

Lawyer <\/span>Mostafa El-Gamal<\/b>, a native of the El-Sadaka El-Gedida area and the first to file a complaint against the head of the water company in Aswan with the governorate’s Attorney General, tells us: “The crisis has been going on for more than ten days. It began with the distribution of leaflets stating that water would be cut in some areas in succession as a result of carrying out some repairs and connecting buildings to the Lotus area. But what happened was a complete water cut for a long period exceeding ten days, and so we filed a complaint with the Public Prosecution bearing (No. 33 Plenary Petitions for 2025) with the aim of holding those responsible for this crisis to account.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The
The complaint submitted to the Attorney General for the Aswan Prosecutions against the head of the water company in Aswan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He adds: “In drafting the complaint, I relied on the text of Articles (44 and 45) of the Drinking Water Regulation Law, with the aim of punishing those who caused the crisis and those responsible for it. Article (44) states: “Taking into account the provisions of Article Four of the articles promulgating this law, with any more severe penalty stipulated in any other law, crimes committed in violation of the provisions of this law shall be punished with the penalties prescribed in the following articles.” Article (45) states: “Anyone who deliberately demolishes, damages or disables, by any means, any of the drinking water or sanitation facilities shall be punished with imprisonment and a fine of no less than ten thousand pounds and no more than 100,000 pounds. If this results in an interruption of the service, the penalty shall be aggravated imprisonment. If any of the acts referred to in the preceding paragraph occurs as a result of negligence, recklessness or lack of precaution, the penalty shall be detention and a fine of no less than ten thousand pounds and no more than one hundred thousand pounds, or one of these two penalties. In all cases, the court shall order the person who committed the act to pay the value of the things demolished or damaged and the costs of restoring the thing to its original state.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

El-Gamal affirms that the water cut crisis in Aswan has become a persistent symptom, occurring as a result of the deteriorating infrastructure and the lack of the maintenance works it needs. He points out that the situation has become unbearable, especially as he has children, supporting two children (aged four years and a year and a half). With the high cost of water (the cost of bottled mineral drinking water reaches EGP 200 a day), he found himself forced to leave his home in El-Sadaka El-Gedida and move temporarily to his father’s house, to secure his family’s basic water needs. He adds that the family in general feels uncomfortable and unsettled, waiting for a breakthrough soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

He denounces the way citizens are treated by the water distribution trucks, noting that they come at times not set in advance, which forces citizens, especially women, to jostle and run after them to get a little water to meet their daily needs. He describes this scene as inhumane and immoral, and as showing no regard for people’s dignity. He calls on affected citizens to join the complaint and stand together as one until this crisis ends and the person responsible for it is held to account.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Photos
Photos showing citizens waiting in front of water distribution trucks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dozens of residents of the El-Sadaka El-Gedida area <\/b>demonstrated<\/b><\/a> at noon on Friday in protest against the water cut for the 12th consecutive day. The residents also broadcast a <\/b>video<\/b><\/a> via the Facebook page “Together for Aswan”, appealing to the President of the Republic, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and asking him to intervene to resolve the crisis. In the video, Hany Youssef, speaking on behalf of the people of Aswan, called on the president to resolve the crisis, and mentioned that the president had previously promised to resolve it during his visit to Aswan to attend the Arab-African Youth Conference in 2019. <\/b><\/p>\n

He said in the video: “We previously submitted a letter to the president through one of the parties of the Civil Democratic Movement to resolve the water crisis and maintain Aswan’s water network, which has been deteriorating for 60 years. The president did indeed intervene and assigned the Armed Forces Engineering Authority to carry out the replacement and renewal of the water and sewage network. In light of the decision, the prime minister visited Aswan to examine the matter and met the head of the water network, who asked him to provide EGP 67 million for the replacement and renewal works. The amount was indeed provided by the Cabinet to the head of the network, but the replacement and renewal process has not happened to this day, and as a result the water cut crisis continues.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Water Pollution in Aswan: What We Know About the Deaths, Injuries and Potential Risks<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How Did the Governorate Deal with the Crisis? <\/b><\/h1>\n

Ismail Kamal, the Governor of Aswan, <\/span>apologised<\/span><\/a>, during his field tour of the El-Sadaka El-Gedida district last Monday, for the suffering of residents as a result of the water cut, and explained that the problem resulted from technical faults that were dealt with immediately by the technical crews of the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Wastewater, under the supervision of the Deputy Minister of Housing, Dr Sayed Ismail, and engineer Mamdouh Raslan, the head of the company. The governor affirmed that the situation was being monitored closely, pointing to the variation in water supply between buildings and between different floors because of air pressure in the networks, and affirming that work is under way to fully stabilise the water supply to meet citizens’ needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of last December, the Governor of Aswan held an expanded <\/span>meeting<\/span><\/a> with a delegation from the Ministry of Housing and Utilities headed by Dr Sayed Ismail, the deputy minister, to discuss the crisis of weak and interrupted water supply. The governor affirmed that coordination with the Ministry of Housing and the Holding Company had produced urgent solutions to deal with the problem radically, with a commitment to restoring regular water supply in all the affected areas within the coming hours. He added that there are future plans to improve the drinking water and sanitation system in the governorate, through coordination between the ministry, the governorate and development partners.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the start of the crisis, in the last week of last December, the Governor of Aswan had decided to refer the director of the water sector at the branch of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Company for investigation, because complaints from the governorate’s residents about repeated cuts of drinking water to some areas and residential districts, without prior warning and for long periods, had been ignored, and directed the formation of a technical committee headed by Yasser Abdel Shafy, the governor’s assistant, to determine the causes of this phenomenon and find radical and urgent solutions to it. In a development of the crisis, Kamal <\/span>referred<\/span><\/a>, on Thursday 2 January, the water cut file to Counsellor Essam El-Din Khalifa, the Attorney General for the Aswan Prosecutions, to investigate the causes of this crisis. He also decided to form a technical committee from the Public Prosecution to examine the details of the incident and determine all the circumstances, in preparation for taking the necessary legal measures against those responsible for the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Sherif El-Sherbiny, the Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities, met last Wednesday with the members of the House of Representatives for Aswan governorate to review citizens’ requests and complaints regarding the water crisis. During the meeting, the MPs presented citizens’ requests and complaints about weak water supply to the areas of El-Mahmoudiya, Distinguished Housing and El-Sadaka El-Gedida, noting that some areas had witnessed water cuts for long periods. For his part, the Minister of Housing affirmed that work had been done to resolve the problem urgently, and that the ministry had taken immediate measures to resume pumping water regularly to those areas. He also indicated that all available capabilities had been allocated, and the equipment and parts needed had been provided to overcome the problem that had been the main reason for the irregular water supply during the past period.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aswan governorate said on Thursday 2 January that it had been agreed to install new motors and pumps at the lifting stations to support the water system, in addition to the arrival of consultants equipped with modern devices to detect water flow inside the pipes. A new drinking water line connecting the El-Mahmoudiya reservoir to the Distinguished Housing area was also put into operation, which will help improve the arrival of water to the upper floors and ease the pressures on the networks in those areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that the referral of the water cut file to the prosecution and the governorate’s announcement came on 3 January; the correct date is Thursday 2 January 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few kilometres from Lake Nasser, which stores more than 164 billion cubic metres of Nile water, the people of Aswan governorate are facing an ongoing crisis of repeated water cuts lasting long periods<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410,413],"tags":[],"kateb":[6247],"class_list":["post-16995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigations-en","category-society-en","kateb-rasha-ammar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/\u0623\u0633\u0648\u0627\u0646-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16995"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24027,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16995\/revisions\/24027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16995"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=16995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}