The drought-stricken country announced other severe restrictions on water use as it braces for another baking summer.
Tunisia will cut water supplies to citizens for seven hours a night in response to the country’s worst ever drought, state water distribution company SONEDE has said.
The drought-stricken country announced other severe restrictions on water use – as it braces for another baking summer – including a ban on using drinking water to irrigate farmland or green spaces, or to clean public areas or cars .
SONEDE said Friday that effective immediately, water will be shut off from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. daily.
Mosbah Helali, the head, said the drought in the country, caused by the scarcity of rain for four consecutive years and which PROBE attributed to climate change, was unprecedented, and called on Tunisians to understand the decision.
He said fines and even jail terms would be considered if the rules are broken.
Residents in several parts of the capital have already complained of unannounced interruptions to their electricity supply at night since the start of the fasting month of Ramadan, when many are staying up late.
“Years of drought and low water flow in reservoirs have affected the country’s water resources, which have reached an unprecedented situation,” the ministry said.
The new decision threatens to exacerbate social tensions in a country whose population suffers from poor public services, high inflation and a weak economy.
The dams in the North African country are at critical lows after years of drought, exacerbated by leaky pipelines in a dilapidated distribution network.
Tunisia recorded a drop in its dam’s capacity to about a billion cubic meters, or 30 percent of the maximum, said Hamadi Habib, a senior agriculture ministry official.
Farmers’ unions have expressed fears for the coming season, especially with regard to grains. A poor domestic harvest would exacerbate Tunisia’s difficulties in obtaining enough flour despite skyrocketing international wheat prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year.
The Tunisian Federation of Agriculture and Fisheries said thousands of hectares of farmland were at risk of being fallow due to the lack of rain.
“This year’s grain season will be catastrophic – there will be no harvest,” spokesman Anis Kharbech told Tunisian media. He said the expected yields would not even be enough to provide seeds for next year’s harvest.
Tunisia’s agricultural sector typically accounts for 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Scientists have said that recurrent heat waves are a clear sign of man-made global warming, and that global droughts will become more frequent, longer and more intense.