The National Directorate of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DINEPA), announced Friday, November 6, 2021 its inability to ensure the continuity of water distribution in 3 municipalities of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince , lack of fuel. They are: Delmas, Tabarre and Cité Soleil.
This institution, already criticized for the poor quality of its services, indicated that the 20 reservoirs it has in the aforementioned municipalities will not be supplied during this period of crisis. An advertisement trivialized by citizens who criticize this structure because DINEPA had never accomplished its mission. Some say they have not received the precious liquid in their tap for several years and call on private operators to supply them.
Water trucks are delivered to more than 6 thousand gourdes ($ 1 = 104 gourdes) depending on the place of residence of the applicant and state officials have not said a word about this situation which has arisen in the country. especially in the capital and its outskirts over the years, giving pride of place to the private business sector which seeks only to increase its profits in an economy which escapes any control by the authorities.
Those who can make investments, make huge profits and do not even pay their tax fees, hence the inability of the State to provide basic services to the population, particularly in the area of health, which is also linked to water supply and sanitation, education, food, housing and recreation operations.
In Haiti, the world is turned upside down, a structure as important for the country as DINEPA like many others, is also minimized, instrumentalized. DINEPA usually receives considerable funds from foreign institutions such as the IDB and the Spanish Cooperation, while the majority of the population is drastically deprived of water. Those who occasionally receive the precious liquid complain of its poor quality and those in charge know it. they don’t give a damn because they too have their own private water delivery companies that are active in the sometimes informal market.
How can DINEPA have the nerve to officially announce to customers the suspension of its water delivery operations while the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSSP) is alarmed by the resurgence of cases of Covid-19 in recent days and asks citizens to respect the barrier measures including hand washing? !!
You are going to bring out the use of hydro-alcoholic products as an alternative, it does not hold water because they are limited to this aspect. What about other domestic uses of water?
Then, how to ask ordinary citizens who are struggling to meet their daily needs and those of their offspring, to enter a supermarket to buy bottles of hydro-alcoholic products? !!
Haiti remains one of the few countries in the world where socio-economic inequalities are so glaring and this with the complicity of those who are responsible for ensuring a minimum of well-being for citizens.
Hence the violence that often characterizes popular protest movements when they are not maneuvered by the politicians of the place.