CAIRO: New Cairo residents say they still suffer from water cuts despite official statements confirming that the problem with the main water pipes has been fixed. Reports of water cuts throughout Greater Cairo have persisted and attributed to ruptured water pipes. The water cuts started on Friday due to the burst of the two main pipes of Kattamaya and New Cairo and continued until Monday. Mohamed Abdel-Rahman, head of the Greater Cairo Water Company, had said that the ruptured pipes had been fixed and that the water would start flowing regularly starting Sunday, Aug. 15. But until Wednesday afternoon, residents of the Third and Fourth Districts in New Cairo were still complaining of water shortages. “The water was completely cut off from Thursday to Monday. Now the water comes and goes; it's so weak that the washing machine doesn't work, and it cuts every couple of hours during the day and from 2 am until the morning. It is continuously cut off,” Wael Mahmoud, a resident of the Third District in New Cairo told Daily News Egypt. Some residents have resorted to storing water during the few hours it is available to cope with the water cuts; others have resorted to staying at relatives' or friends' homes. “We try to store water while its running before it cuts off again, but it's very difficult to deal with so many water cuts, especially with the heat and the fasting,” Mahmoud said. “I have three children, including a baby who's only a few months old, it's very hard to take care of him without water,” he added. Maha Habib, a resident of the Fourth District in News Cairo, told Daily News Egypt, “We usually get water from Nasr City, but on Saturday I couldn't take it any more, I went to stay at my mom's house.” The residents complained that the water company doesn't even inform them beforehand when there will be water cuts so they can prepare themselves by storing water. “We're the ones who call the water company to inform them that there's a water cut; they have no idea what's going on,” Mahmoud said “And even when we do call them, they never answer, it took me two days to find out there was a problem with the main pipes,” he added. State-run daily Al-Ahram reported that the head of the third district in New Cairo, Sayyed Sabbagh, said the reason behind the water cuts in New Cairo was some unauthorized digging conducted near the main pipes which led to their rupture.
“The water was completely cut off from Thursday until 9.30 last night (Tuesday), now the water is very weak, the washing machine and the dishwasher don't work, and there are water cuts all the time, but now they usually don't last more than an hour,” Habib told Daily News Egypt. When I called the water company, they said the problem is with the water hydraulic elevators, they can't lift the water to my villa because my villa is too high and there's too much pressure on the water,” she added. There were also reports of water cuts in Al-Rehab City, Maadi, Nasr City, Ein El-Sira, El Waily and El-Salam City. Ruptured water pipes were to blame in most of these Cairo neighborhoods. “They cut off the water all day, at night the water runs for a short period of time,” Salwa Abdel-Wahab, an Al-Rehab resident, told Daily News Egypt “It's very irritating and inconvenient, I can't take a shower when I get back from work in this heat and I have to cook iftar at night for the next day when the water is available which is really exhausting,” she added. According to Abdel Wahab, officials at Al-Rehab said there is a problem with the main water network that the government is fixing and there's nothing they can do about it. Tamer Habib, a Maadi resident, told Daily News Egypt, “We've had water cuts on a daily basis several times a day since the beginning of Ramadan. They can last for an hour and sometimes more.”
