While the Matagalpa mayor’s office, led by the sanctioned mayor Sadrach Zeledón, is dedicated to beautifying swimming pools and overflowing them with water to increase distraction environments in the current summer season, some residents of different neighborhoods have reported a lack of drinking water in their homes.
«I have five days of being without water. I have to go to a co-worker who lives below to bring water to drink and from another side, I bring it to even wash dishes or bathe in the house,” complained a citizen named Vicente, a resident of the Sor María neighborhood. Romero, south of Matagalpa.
The resident commented, however, that he has never had a problem receiving the bill from the Nicaraguan Water and Sewerage Company (Enacal) for a water service that does not reach him. “They do not put the water, and the bill comes to me for almost a thousand pesos, this is a shameless robbery, a shameless sovereign,” he said.
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Citizen reports for lack of drinking water come from different parts of the city of Matagalpa, specifically from the southern zone: Otoniel Arauz neighborhood, Gradas de Apante, Apante neighborhood, San Francisco school, Lucidia Mantilla and Solingalpa.
unequal treatment
A citizen named Homero García Morraz denounced that drinking water “never lacks where the bosses or administrators of Enacal.” “People from the neighborhoods pay for a service, very bad, by the way, and to boot, with altered receipts,” he complained.
A nurse named Angélica said that she has to get up at one in the morning to fill dishes because at that time a trickle of water begins that only lasts an hour. “That is rude to working people, single mothers like me and they don’t give true answers in that Enacal,” she said annoyed.
In the Sandinista media in Matagalpa, an official from the water and sewage company identified as Abel López, responded to the concerns of the population by saying that “this situation is normal in this dry season. The company is going to assess each situation in these neighborhoods and find how to satisfy this legitimate need of the people,” he said.
“We must be clear: there are people who waste water washing their vehicles with hoses and to water the plants,” he complained, without mentioning the thousands of gallons of water that the mayor’s office used to overflow the Molino Norte pools, which constitutes a huge waste of water.
Savings recommendations
Consulted on the issue of the lack of water in Matagalpa, mainly, and Nicaragua in general, the expert on consumer issues, the former president of Enacal, Ruth Selma Herrera, commented that if there is less water in Matagalpa it is because the city “also ran out of forests.”
“Matagalpa depends on the sources of Molino Norte and Chaguitillo, but this resource is depleted and the populations of the hills and the entire city are growing vertiginously every month, let alone a year,” Herrera said.
«Let’s do the mathematical operation: the same amount of water, more population increase, more daily waste of water resources, everything is the same as what we see: increasing shortages. That is dangerous for everyone », he reasoned.
He also recommended that since we all need water, we are all called to take care of it, and the first thing to do is the State, through its administrator, which is the government, implementing a serious and safe strategy so that no one is out of the right to drinking water.
Another recommendation is that when water and sanitation projects are carried out, they are calculated taking into account the population growth trend at 30 years or more, “in this way, water shortages would be avoided to a lesser extent,” he said.
By United Voices