Armies of Liberation

I just can’t take it anymore.

Yemen Times

SANA’A, Nov. 9 — A seminar on the hazards of using sewage water to irrigate crops was held on Thursday in Taiz during the Al-Saeed Forum for Sciences and Culture.

Chaired by Professor Abdulrahman Al-Zubairi, chairman of the department of Microbiology in the Faculty of Sciences at Taiz University, the seminar stressed the importance of immediate attention to the fact that a shortage of water resources has prompted many Yemeni farmers to resort to use sewage water to irrigate their farms.

Al-Zubairi explains, “The shortage of water is the result of both the increasing rate of population growth and irresponsible irrigation. Only seven percent of underground water is consumed by the population, while 93 percent is used for irrigating crops, especially qat.”

The total amount of water used annually is 3.5 billion cubic meters of which 93 percent is used in agriculture, 6 percent in households and 1 percent by industry. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, the renewed fresh water is 2.5 billion cubic meters per year creating a gap between used water and renewed fresh water of one billion cubic meters a year.

(Read on …)

Right after AQ calls for more maritime actions…

The global shipping community has called upon the world’s naval powers to deploy more warships to patrol the commercially strategic Gulf of Aden to counter rising levels of piracy off the coast of Somalia.

The call comes in the wake of frequent incidents of piracy in the region, the latest being the hijacking of two vessels off the coast of Somalia Thursday.

In a joint statement, leading ship associations and transport unions said the situation is “spiraling completely and irretrievably out of control.”

They have made urgent calls to the United Nations in New York and its maritime body in London seeking the deployment of effective naval forces.

It is said that some shipping firms were already refusing to transit the Gulf of Aden.

The vital sea route in the Arabian Sea between Yemen and Somalia connects the Gulf and Asia to Europe and beyond via the Suez Canal. It is critical to Gulf oil shipments.

Currently, Somali pirates are holding 13 vessels captive, along with more than 200 sailors. Most of the gangs are based in northern Somalia’s Puntland region, where security forces reportedly clashed with pirates on Thursday.

Yemen Times

(IRIN) - Hundreds of families (totalling about 2,000 people) in the southern governorate of Abyan have begun to leave their homes due to severe drought in their mountain villages, a senior official has said.

Sirar District, a mountainous area in Abyan, has been particularly badly affected since May.

Al-Khader Mohammed Saleh, director-general of Sirar District, told IRIN that over 300 families had left their villages over the past week as a result of the drought.

(Read on …)

IRIN

SANAA, 14 August 2008 (IRIN) - Water availability in Yemen has been worsening by the year and the government has no clear strategy on how to deal with the problem, experts have said.

They say water shortages, which affect about 80 percent of the country’s 21 million people, are exacerbated by the high fertility rate, rapid urbanisation, the cultivation of `qat’ (a mild narcotic), a lack of public awareness, and the arbitrary digging of wells.

The experts made the remarks at a symposium on 12 August in Sanaa city organised by the Sheba Centre for Strategic Studies (SCSS), a local think-tank. Entitled Water Security in Yemen: Challenges and Solutions, the symposium brought together dozens of local officials and experts on water.

Khalil al-Maqtari, an official at the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation and an expert of topography, said the water situation was worsening as there was no effective strategy to manage its use.

(Read on …)

Yemen Observer

Qat chewers are on a steady rise in Yemen, especially amongst young people, where qat chewers constitute 70 percent of men and more than 30 percent of women, said Mansour al-Hawshabi, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation.

Al-Hawshabi reported this rise during the opening of a workshop on policies for qat in Yemen, which took place in Sana’a on Sunday. “Qat occupies large areas of agricultural land at the expense of many crops, particularly important cereals,” he said.

The prevalence of qat is considered a significant obstacle to lifting the productivity of other crops. Qat plantations are expanding by 4-6 thousand hectares annually, which demand more than 30 percent of the total water resources allocated to agriculture.

Various surveys and studies show that 85 percent of qat cultivation is concentrated in five governorates: Amran, Dhamar, Sana’a, Hajja and Ibb. “Qat does not just pose agricultural and environmental problems, but it is a significant risk to the health of people especially when using pesticides indiscriminately,” said al-Hawshabi.

Qat has become a dilemma facing the expansion of food crops to provide food security, said Abdul-Karim al-Arhabi, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs and Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. “It is draining more than 30 percent of the water devoted to agriculture.”

“The spending on qat plants is a priority to people who put it above necessary expenses such as food, education and other important needs,” he said. “The risk indicators of qat have become clear and specific to all and we must sharpen our determination and efforts to address the problem of qat as a major challenge facing agriculture in Yemen.”

The cultivation of qat in Yemen rose from 136,138 hectares in 2006 to 141,163 hectares last year, and its production rose from 147, 444 tons to 156, 290 tons during the same period.

Qat’s popularity in Yemen has led to its excessive cultivation, depleting the country’s agricultural resources. It is estimated that production increases by about 10 to 15 percent every year. Water consumption is so high that groundwater levels in the Sana’a basins are diminishing and are expected to dry out in just a little over 10 years from now.

April 23 (Bloomberg) — Nagy Ali Mohammed isn’t worried about a water shortage in Yemen. He says God will provide what’s needed for the craggy, volcanic land where he grows khat, a leaf chewed daily by most Yemeni men.

“There is Allah above,” the 50-year-old said as a red truck pumped water into his fields. “There always will be water.”

Yemen will need more than Nagy’s faith in the divine to avert a crisis. The Middle Eastern nation’s addiction to khat is sucking up scarce water resources. Cultivation of the mild stimulant has increased 13-fold in three decades and now uses 30 percent of the nation’s water, according to the World Bank.

Khat is consuming water needed to meet growing demands as the population increases by 3.5 percent annually and people desert the countryside for the city. The capital, Sanaa, won’t have enough water for its more than 2 million inhabitants within two decades, said Ramon Scoble, team leader for a water project run by German aid agency GTZ.

“It is not a matter of if it happens anymore, but a matter of when,” he said.

The water shortage risks exacerbating other challenges faced by the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, which doesn’t have the oil and gas resources of neighboring Saudi Arabia and Oman. A surge in al-Qaeda attacks is driving away tourists. On April 11, the U.S. State Department ordered non-essential embassy employees to leave Sanaa.

Rising commodity prices will accelerate the annual inflation rate to 15 percent this year, the highest in the region, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit report.

Arabia Felix

Called Arabia Felix, or happy Arabia, by the Romans for its abundant natural resources, Yemen now imports as much as 95 percent of its wheat.

“The water shortage is an acute problem,” said Selva Ramachandran of the United Nations Development Program in Sanaa.

The lack of water is likely to change the landscape of the Islamic nation of 19.3 million. Scoble estimated that as much 40 percent of Sanaa residents will have to relocate within 25 years.

Yemeni farmers pump five times more water than is returned to underground basins each year, according to the Ministry of Water and Environment.

Khat, which Yemenis say brings them clarity of thought and humor, is engrained in the local culture. More than 50 percent of Yemeni men chew the leaf every day, according to a World Bank report published last June. Some spend as much as 6 hours a day chewing baseball-sized wads jammed into their cheeks.

One in seven working Yemeni produce and distribute khat, making it the second-largest source of jobs in the country, the World Bank says. It employs more people than the public sector.

Subsidized Fuel

Khat farmer Nagy Ali Mohammed says he isn’t naive enough to say there’s no problem, though there’s little he can do but pray.

“We get our money from khat,” he said.

To irrigate khat, farmers have dug tube wells powered by state-subsidized fuel.

The government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is in a bind. While cheap fuel encourages the over-use of water, reducing the subsidies would make it too expensive for farmers to irrigate their fields, said Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hamdi, deputy minister of water and environment.

“The government talks about conserving water, but indirectly the government subsidizes water extraction through fuel subsidies,” al-Hamdi said.

In the past, the government tried to prohibit khat use in public offices and excluded khat farmers from receiving loans for irrigation projects. While police are barred from chewing khat on duty, men in green uniforms smile with wads in their cheeks and guns slung over their shoulders as they search for al-Qaeda members on the roads around Sanaa.

“It is a losing battle,” al-Hamdi said, adding that the government doesn’t have the manpower, training or money to fight the drug.

Wells and Water Jars

In As-Sowdah, a village north of Sanaa that has no electricity, Hindia Ahmed treks 500 meters across the parched earth five or six times a day to reach the local well. When the well runs dry, she must descend into the Amran basin by foot or donkey to collect water trucked in by the government.

“It is difficult and hard work carrying water,” said the 50-year-old woman, with a metal pot balanced on her head. Her black headscarf and green-flowered skirt stand out against the barren landscape. “I always have a backache.”

Households of 8 to 15 people in villages such as As-Sowdah use as little as 40 to 100 liters a day for cooking, drinking and washing, Scoble said. The World Health Organization says each person should have access to 180 liters of water daily.

Inside Bab al-Yemen, the historical gateway to the Old City of Sanaa and along alleys bordered by stone and baked-brick houses, buying khat is a daily ritual. Men wearing pin-striped suit jackets and skirts, with ornate daggers strapped around their waists, haggle over price and quality.

“Khat is the whiskey of Yemen,” said Saleh Amid Qalan, a 32-year-old government employee, standing in a passage next to the seventh century Great Mosque, the country’s oldest.

Dirty water claims more victims. this disease comes from dirty water. Other victims of dirty water include babies dying from diarrhea, girls who spend all day lugging water instead of being in school, people who spend their food money on water, and those infected with other diseases. 90% of tribal disputes and violence arise initially from water issues. There is a water plan but the ministries won’t coordinate.

Mareb Press

The Director of Tehama Development Authority, Abdul Rahman AlSaqaf, revealed that new animals have been affected by myiasis which is caused by screwworm fly, in Hudeidah province.

Al-Saqaf said, “Some new cases of screw-worm larvae infections appeared among the livestock in Dhaha district, south of Al-Hudiadh province.”

He made it clear that the office of agricultural ministry in the province and Tehama Development Authority sprayed parasiticides in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading.

The independent NewsYemen website quoted the head of the Epidemic Monitoring Center, Sultan al-Maqtary, as saying that there were infections among human beings. He stressed that the center has taken the necessary procedures for emergency.

The Ministry of Agriculture has warned that more than 8,000 livestock in three of the country’s provinces have been affected by myiasis.

The fatal disease has been found in 838 villages in Sa’ada and Hajjah provinces and at least five villages in Hudeidah province in north-west Yemen since it first appeared in the country in December 2007, the ministry added.

(Read on …)

Update: more than 3 million people (out of 20 million Yemenis) infected. Thank goodness for the WHO. It is caused by dirty water.

Yemen Times: SANA’A, Feb. 20 — In cooperation with international organizations, Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population will conduct a four-year campaign to fight Bilharzia, Phase one of which will launch next month.

“Bilharzia is a forgotten disease that’s not a global issue,” WHO representative in Yemen Ghulam Rabbani stated Wednesday, indicating that Yemen and Sudan are the only Middle Eastern nations still suffering the disease. For this reason, WHO is conducting this campaign in Yemen.

“Bilharzia leads to incurable liver failure and, effectively, death,” Rabbani said, adding that several Middle Eastern countries like Egypt and Afghanistan that suffered from the disease have succeeded in eradicating it completely through such campaigns and distributing anti-Bilharzia medicine to those infected.

“Just like it has succeeded in eradicating smallpox and polio, Yemen also can succeed in eradicating Bilharzia,” Rabbani stated.

According to WHO statistics, more than three million people in Yemen are infected with the disease, which means significant humanitarian and economic losses.

(Read on …)

Yemen Times

SANA’A, Feb. 11 —Abud Al-Rahman Fathl, Minister of Water & the Environment, said last week that the water treatment station in Sana’a district has undergone damages due to a hazardous waste leak into the sanitation facilities.

The minister, who spoke in a Parliament session about the procedures taken by the government to treat water waste in Sana’a, especially in the Bani Al-Hareth district, confirmed that the workers at the water treatment station faced many difficulties because a great amount of oil and waste from factories, slaughterhouses, and hospitals flows into the groundwater treated in the sanitation facilities. He claims the problem has existed for the last five years.

According to the minister, the contamination, which is in Sana’a’ Basin in the Bani Al-Hareth district, has consequences. For example, he stated that the water is often not fully treated because the station is not able to remove all of the harmful elements in it, and even after treatment, the quality of water is still poor, full of water-borne diseases and not suitable for drinking.

(Read on …)

YEMEN: Sanitation services limited, sewage treatment plants poor 05 Mar 2008 16:29:11 GMT
Source: IRIN

SANAA, 5 March 2008 (IRIN) - Sanitation services in Yemen are limited. Almost all villages in rural areas, where 75 percent of Yemen’s 21 million people live, still use traditional means: Sewage is either dumped in watercourses or piped onto open ground.

According to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2007-8, 43 percent of the population used improved sanitation, implying connection to a public sewer, connection to a septic tank system, pour-flush latrines, simple pit latrines or ventilated improved pit latrines.

The UNDP figures indicate an improvement over recent years: The official 2004 population census showed that only 15.9 percent of Yemeni households had access to a sanitary network (implying piped sewage only). Of the houses not connected to sanitation networks, 26.8 percent had covered holes for gathering excreta, 16.6 percent had uncovered holes, and 37.1 percent had nothing.

Officials at the Ministry of Water and Environment said the government was striving to improve sanitation services, but lacked funds.

Saleh al-Hakimi, a senior adviser with the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) office in Yemen, said Yemen was unlikely to achieve the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goal (MDG - halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015) unless significant further efforts were made. “The government of Yemen is making efforts to provide sanitation services but these efforts are not sufficient,” he said, adding that the lack of adequate sewage treatment plants was leading to groundwater contamination.

The UN has also said Yemen is not on track to meet the sanitation MDG.

Rural areas

Ahmed al-Soufi, an information officer at the National Water and Sanitation Foundation (NWSF), a government body under the Ministry of Water and Environment, told IRIN that in rural areas, human waste was often collected in open places near people’s homes.

“Special tanks then carry the human waste to unpopulated areas,” he said, adding that the lack of sanitation services led to health problems like diarrhoeal diseases. He said these areas had no sewage treatment plants.

Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hamdi, deputy minister of water and environment, told IRIN that in rural areas sanitation services were also difficult to set up due to varied geographical and geological conditions.

“People in rural areas do not use as much water as in urban areas. It is difficult to set up sanitation services in mountainous areas. Most villages consist of a few houses and it is difficult to establish sewage treatment facilities in each village,” he explained.

Sewage treatment plants ineffective

Salem Mohammed, head of GAPE’s Epidemic Surveillance Department, told IRIN that in the 1990s there was bacterial pollution because of waste sewage being dumped outside cities. “But sewage treatment plants solved the problem only to some extent,” he said. Their location was often inappropriate as they were close to residential areas.

Ali Abdullah al-Dhabhani, head of the Toxins and Wastes Department at the General Authority for Protecting the Environment (GAPE), told IRIN that hospital and medical laboratory waste is treated at sewage works. This waste contains dangerous chemical substances, bacteria and viruses, he said, adding: “Unfortunately, sometimes farmers use such waste water to irrigate their crops.”

Al-Dhabhani warned that water treated at sewage works, which also often processed medical waste and waste from abattoirs, was not fit for irrigating crops owing to chemical contamination. The lack of water was also a problem as it meant the concentration of toxic chemicals remained high.

“Health risks include cholera, diarrhoeal diseases and typhoid,” GAPE’s Mohammed said, adding that sewage plants were “sub-standard”.

Sewage treatment plants are found only in the big cities, like Sanaa, Aden, Taiz, and al-Hudeidah. According to al-Dhabhani, Sanaa’s sewage works was designed in the 1980s and opened in 1999, but never designed to cater for a city of around 2.5 million people.

Ecological disaster already, fish washing up on shore.

HODEIDAH, NewsYemen

Reliable sources in Hodeidah said that Yemeni Coast Guards have found, two miles off Al-Salif port, 26 bags contain poisonous materials threw out in the Yemeni territorial waters near Camaran island by an unknown trade ship last Wednesday.

The coast guards along with teams from the ministries of fisheries, environment and maritime science are looking for more bags might be thrown out and washed by wind to somewhere else, said the sources. They said that many fish and other sea livings were found dead on shores near Al-Salif port.

Official bodies do not talk about this fearing a horrible environmental crisis may happen due to such materials if searching teams could not find them and get them out, said the sources.

Sources pointed that each bag contains 400 gram of such dangerous materials.

This incident came few hours after Yemeni Coast Guards lifted up bodies of ten thousand livestock hurled by a ship coming from the African Horn to water off Hodeidah coasts, according to official sources that did not identify the ship.

Yemen Times

SANA’A, Dec. 16 — 10,000 livestock have sunk in the red see as a result of a U.A.E ship turned over. Likewise, another boat, belonging to Yemeni traders, carrying a huge quantity of pesticides made the same problem in the red see. Livestock and pesticides endangered the Red Sea resources, confirmed Yaha Al-kynaei, Chairman of the Yemen Authority for Developing Yemeni Islands.

(Read on …)

SANA’A, NewsYemen

Oil and gas have provoked protests amongst people in oil-rich Yemeni provinces of Marib and Shabwa as people there ask the government and oil companies for 10 percent of oil and gas revenues and more attention.

Hundreds of citizens in Marib gathered on Tuesday to complain environmental pollution, the need of farmers who depend upon diesel for the State support. They demanded employments in military and civil institutions and oil companies, scholarships of different specializations as well as increasing the number of beneficiaries from social security.

The protesters demanded in their statement compensations for farmers affected by oil and gas contamination.

The protesters formed a committee comprising 54 sheikhs, social figures and law specialists to follow up meeting the requests.

(Read on …)

Yemen Times

Yemen is still an agricultural based economy, employing almost half the workforce and providing livelihoods for over two-thirds of the population. However, the agricultural sector is facing enormous challenges that obstruct its development, ranging from policy issues, to trade, production, and water issues. This report sheds the light on the recent developments in the Agricultural sector and the outlook for upcoming Years.

Yemen’s Agricultural Economy is Shrinking. The contribution of Agricultural to the GDP is falling from 18 percent in 2004 with an expectation to drop to 13 percent in 2007, while production of crops in the country has been decreasing, along with the landmass allocated for agricultural activity, and therefore the Agricultural Sector is also employing less people, and in turn affecting the livelihoods of more than twelve million people.

(Read on …)

What should that number actually be, one million

YT

Water merchants and qat plantation owners are powerful interest groups.

Yemen Times:

SANA’A, Oct 10 — Halving agriculture consumption of water, reducing urban water waste by 50 percent, and treating wastewater are the main measures proposed to avert a water crisis in Yemen.

An action plan has been drawn up after a two-year study by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Working with the Gneral Authority for Rural Water Supply (GARWSP) and the National Water Authority (NWRA), they have warned that unless demand for water is reduced significantly, the water resources in the Sana’a Basin may disappear “in the very near future”.

(Read on …)

Yemen Times:

Wide areas of agricultural lands in Yemen are exposed to deterioration, said official report published last week.

According to the report, which was issued by the Centre of Natural Resources at the Ministry of Agriculture, 85 percent of the agricultural lands are subject to deterioration due to natural causes such as water shortage and desertification.

The report said that the percentage of deteriorating lands increases by 5 percent because of human expansion and 3 percent because of desertification annually.

These numbers are very significant especially that only 13.6 percent of Yemeni land (about 6.2 million hectares) is fertile. Moreover, only 1.2 to 1.6 hectares is actually used in agriculture.

(Read on …)

Cereal production declined dramatically in the last decades. Agricultural land dedicated to qat and water allocation are relevent issues as well.

SANA’A, NewsYemen

Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation Mansour al-Hoshabi said that the food gap in Yemen is very wide and the rate of wheat imports is still high, 92.7 percent.

Dr. al-Hoshabi expected that Yemen could fill only 15 to 20 percent of the gap in the coming 10 or 15 years.

(Read on …)

Thats quite a turn out.

News Yemen

TAIZ, NewsYemen

While leaders of opposition parties, Joint Meeting Parties, try to gather their supporters in Taiz province for more protests against what they said “price hikes, corruption and low level of services, leaders in the General People’s Congress accused them of provoking people and seeking to make riots so that investors think that Yemen is not stable.

The JMP’s office in Taiz stated that people ran to the streets to peacefully raise the slogan “No Life Without Water”, “Stop Fatal Price Hikes” and “No New Yemen With Corruption”.

The protest was safe, but some leaders in the GPC have shown anger with it, especially at the time Yemenis streets witness protests in different places of the country against different issues.

(Read on …)

Seven hours a day hauling water

Almotamar.net - A new field study prepared by a number of researchers and academicians disclosed that 98% of women loving in the rural area of Wisab, 180km to the west of the city of Thamar, spend more than 17 hours daily in hard works inside and outside the house.

The study conducted by Dr Mohammed al-Shiaibi at the college of administration sciences at Thamar University in Yemen and a number of researchers on the social and economic situations in the areas of Wisab, pointed out that women spend most of the time in working outside the house to bring the needs of their houses. Those needs are mainly bringing water from far and rugged areas, collecting fire wood, repairing agriculture terraces and preparing them as well as plowing them. The women also work in grazing, raising children, doing household works and carrying out many tasks supposed too be done by men in following up many of the daily life affairs.

The study confirmed that the women in Wisab face many difficult circumstances and harsh living conditions as well as the hard daily work and challenges such as the death of high proportion of expectant women and 50% of them get infected with various types of diseases, physical and psychological. The average rate of the woman age there reaches at 45 years and a high proportion of them lack education and qualification.

The study says abstention from education is attributed to lack of schools for girls in that area because all schools there follow co-education system in addition to that there are no facilities to employ girls graduated from secondary schools and there are no establishments for higher education nearby the area. This is reflected negatively on newly enrolled girls. According to the study, many people of the area see girls education as a kind of a waste of time added to that the early marriage.

The study ascribed reasons f diseases spread to malnutrition, absence of balanced food meal, fatigue in work and ignorance in addition to far distances between health establishments limited services.

An excellent report from the YO on a very serious situation:

The number of children who are suffering from rickets, a softening of the bones in children potentially leading to fractures and deformity, is increasing in the Sanhan district in Sana’a governorate, said a new Yemeni study. The results of the study were presented in a meeting held at UNICEF on Sunday, May 28. A large number of Sanhanis are suffering from osteomalacia, a condition similar to rickets occurring in adults, as well as tooth decay and corrosion, as a result of increasing the fluoride in the drinking water in this area.

The meeting gathered different sectors of the UNICEF, the Public Authority for Rural Water Resources, and journalists to discuss the issue. It is also took some preliminary measures to fight against this problem and to educate people about it. Fluoride is a known mutagen, particularly where it is found in concentrated amounts. In the body, fluoride accumulation occurs primarily in the bones, particularly during the developmental years. Yet fluoride is often added in minute amounts to drinking water, as it strengthens teeth in small concentrations. There, fluoride artificially stimulates bone cell growth, generally in long bones such as the legs and arms, which may lead to cancerous growths.

(Read on …)

How sad.

Al-Sahwa

June 6 ,2007- Hundreds of al-Marawa citizens, located in the coastal province, Hodaida, rushed out to streets on Tuesday, protesting price hikes of water in a new water project.

They said that the new prices of the new project water reached to tens of thousands, labeling it as a catastrophe.

For its part, JMP issued a statement in which it demanded the local council in the district to reconsider its mistaken policies towards the poor citizens.

It is worth reclaiming that Hodaida is considered the poorest province in Yemen.

74% female illiteracy, I think it is, and most girls don’t go to school becasue they are needed to haul water everyday. About 70% of people live in rural areas, and only about a quarter of those have any access to clean water. The city of Taiz gets the water turned on once every 40 days. Otherwise they buy from private water sellers.

YT:

The Women’s National committee (WNC) sponsored by OXFAM – GB (Yemen), and under the patronage and attendance of his Excellency Dr Abdulsalam Al-Joffy- Minister of Education held on 30 of April 2007 a workshop to share the findings on an evaluation study of the progress in implementation of the first year of the Third Five Year Plan for Development and Eradicating Poverty 2006-2010. The study focused on the Education component, and more specifically, the objectives which aim at raising the acceptance and enrolment rates of females in Primary Education and increasing the number of female teachers in rural areas. In particular, the study selected the components of the implementation of the construction of female schools as well as female teachers’ employment during the year 2006 in three governorates that were chosen according to the high rates of girls’ enrolment. Those are Taiz, Abyan, and Haggah governorates.

(Read on …)

90% of acts of violence result from water disputes. I have to see if this is the same one that other reports say was terror related.

Sana’a, April 19 (Saba)- The murder of security director in Al-Matama district of Al-Jawf province was not a terrorist act, according an official source.

The source said the murder occurred when the security director Saleh Mohammad Teisan went to settle a dispute over digging a water well
in Al-Matama.

It confirmed in a statement to Saba that Teisan was alone denying reports that he was accompanied by seven security personnel, calling media to check facts and credibility.

YT

TAIZ

Influential person demolishes home with residents insides

April 15 — One of the influential persons in Al-Hasab area in Taiz, aided by a group of policemen, demolished a house, belonging to the citizen, Mr. Awadh Saif Al-Selwi while women and children were inside under the pretext that this person is one of the landlord’s heirs. The mother of the children revealed that policemen, accompanied by gunmen, came aboard police vehicles and raided the house without giving them any chance to go outside.

HAJJAH

Water Corporation threatened of bankruptcy

April 14 — Officials in Hajja governorate’s Local Water Corporation mentioned that the corporation, which is only two years old, is bound to collapse and threatened of bankruptcy due to the heavy loans it granted to social personalities in the governorate. Local sources said that the debts on social personalities to the corporation amount up to YR 120 million. They added that corporation hardly pay the salaries of workers and the operating expenses.

IBB

NUPO criticizes ruling party’s policy

April 15 — The Ibb Branch of Nasserite Unionist Popular Organization (NUPO) expressed concern about obstacles posed to projects funded by the exceptional budget of Ibb Governorate. It said that the money is wasted and the projects are randomly implemented under the pretext that those in charge of works have limited time to complete them as the 17th anniversary of the National Unity is drawing nearer. In addition,The party’s branch released a statement criticising the ruling party’s policy with regard to transforming the development projects into seasonal ones.

AM

almotamar.net - Al-Utaibah & Rawas Emirates Group intends to construct investment projects in Yemen in areas pf electricity, water desalination, petrochemicals and communications at a cost estimated at $ one billion.

The Utaibah Group’s Board of Directors Chairman Sheikh Abdulsallam al-Rawas said “We have come to Yemen for investment in energy through building a power generating station with capacity of 300 MEGAWATT according to BOT system or that of BOO, in addition to investment in the area of water desalination.”

He said his group has conducted feasibility study and hope to make other studies either individually or in cooperation with the state. He said a foreign company had previously conducted a study of feasibility for this project but its results are not compatible with results of the study we conducted as European companies operate in a different system not similar to the American systems. That necessitates giving opportunity to our company to study what is convenient with the nature of its work and capabilities.

Saba news agency also quoted al-Rawas as saying that they have learnt that the Yemeni government has the intention to produce 1400 MEGAWATT of electric power and putting g 200 MEGAWATT to investment and that they are ready to produce the total power, i.e. production of 3400 MEGAWATT with specifications the government requires, whether through gas stations or stations operated by solar energy.

Regarding investment in water desalination al-Rawas said they presented to government officials an offer for investment in this field under the system of BOB included all information, capabilities and equipment the group possesses in this regard and they are waiting for the re[ply.

There’s some estimate that rural women spend an average of seven hours a day procuring water. This is good that the Minister is speaking out. The Parliament rejects its own authority. However if the Ministries can grab some control of their areas, its possible that actual progress and reform can occur. They must be so much resistance on a daily basis. Water is among the most urgent concerns facing the nation. Desertification has an enormous impact on everything.

SANA’A, March 21 — The Minister of Water and Environment revealed that even though Yemen has the best water strategy and hydrocarbon preservation legislation in the Middle East, such measures are yet to be put into action; “There is an approved national water strategy, a water investment plan, and many regulations and decrees, but the problem lies in the implementation” said Abdulrahman Alaryani, stressing that the Yemeni government’s inability to implement these strategies have lead to donors reconsidering their support to the water sector in Yemen. “Now we have a crisis with the donors because we couldn’t move from planning to implementation” said the minister who explained that donors are now resorting to conditional support. “The donors warned us that their constant support will be conditional upon visible results regarding water management in Yemen” he added.

(Read on …)