Water still polluted in capital after flooding

A week after floods and landslides caused by torrential rains left around 400,000 people without access to safe drinking water in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, more than half of the city's water supplies are still polluted. The potential outbreak of waterborne diseases remains very high, according to a UNDP official. "Good access to drinking water is still not possible for 60 percent of the population [in Dushanbe]," Paul Handley, head of the United Nations Coordination Unit (UNCU) in Tajikistan, told IRIN from the capital, noting that both the international community and national authorities are monitoring the level of contaminated water. "The water is still heavily polluted with a lot of sediments," he stated. "The UN is going to be supporting the authorities to continue sending [clean] water by truck for the next 10 days," Handley said, adding that the international organisation would support them with the fuel costs for transport. NGOs such as the UK-based Merlin and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were working in close coordination with the Tajik Ministry of Emergency Situations (MES) to keep the roads open to facilitate the delivery of the water. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was continuing to undertake chlorination activities, and together with the International Federation of the Red Cross started monitoring the quality of the water in 16 locations of Dushanbe on Thursday. While NGOs and UN agencies are working together withthe City Health Department to provide clean drinking water to citizens and monitor the level of pollution, donors are looking at ways of supporting more immediate measures to bring drinking water back into households taps. "There is a considerable work being done by Merlin, in particular, and by UNICEF and the Red Cross, also to prepare for a possible outbreak of waterborne diseases," Handley stressed, adding that they were working with the city's hospitals to provide them with the necessary drugs and medical equipment. He said that it was to early to determine the potential number of people who could be affected by waterborne diseases due to the incubation period of the likely virus. "If there is going to be an outbreak we are expecting it to start early next week," he explained. The UNCU official spoke of the high level of cooperation between the authorities and the international community. "It is clear that the national capacity has been overwhelmed and so agencies have been able to work very well with different government departments," he said. In addition to the funds already raised by UN agencies for this crisis, some US $200,000, the Humanitarian Aid Office of the European Commission (ECHO) is expected to approve an additional 350,000 euros ($444,000) for coordination and relief work, according to UNDP sources.