End of free water, power in rebel north as peace inches closer

With Cote d’Ivoire creeping towards peace, people living in the rebel-held north of the country will have to start paying for their water and electricity again after more than two years of free tap water and power because of the conflict. The country’s electricity company CIE, along with water firm SODECI, this week announced that from May on, it would be bills and business as usual for the estimated six million people living north of the buffer zone that cuts a swathe across the West African country. Cote d’Ivoire has been split in two since a failed rebellion in September 2002, with the insurgents headquartered in this northern town of Bouake and the south firmly in the hands of President Laurent Gbagbo. Now with the peace process edging back on track, the utilities are keen to return to normal business practice. “We can’t continue with a situation where part of Cote d’Ivoire pays for its water and electricity and the other doesn’t. We have run out of steam,” Vlei Gaston, CIE’s deputy general manager, said on Tuesday after meeting Gbagbo. “We’re starting to invoice our services and demand payment.” Both CIE and SODECI, whose headquarters and staff have been based in the capital Abidjan, have had no way of billing customers in the north and have been forced to lay on their services for free since the trouble erupted. CIE's sales manager Jules Kouadio has estimated losses for both utilities since the civil war began at at least 40 billion CFA francs (US $78 million). To start with, only large non-private consumers such as hotels, restaurants or companies in the cities of Bouake, Korhogo and Man will be billed, with invoices to be established from 1 January, 2005 onwards. No date has yet been set to invoice private homes. Leaders of the rebel New Forces approved this month’s return to normal billing, said SODECI’s technical manager Damas Coulibaly. “Negotiations were not easy, we had to fight hard,” he said. In Bouake, the country’s second biggest city, there was mixed reaction to the news. “I can’t possibly pay,” said shop-owner Ali Dembele, who has done little business for almost three years, like many tradesman in the north where the economy is at a standstill. “Survival and how to feed my family are my only concerns,” he added. “I’m making no money. Did we ask for the crisis? Let the Ivorian state pay CIE and SODECI to maintain their services in this part of the country.” But other residents said paying for water and power might help improve the services. “If this will help avoid blackouts and water cuts as well as disease linked to dirty water, then the return of billing is welcome news,” said Marie Esther Kinaly. Last November, when Gbagbo's troops broke a ceasefire accord, the power and water supplies to the rebel-held north were cut for almost two weeks. Three weeks ago, the United Nations reported a water crisis in rebel-held Korhogo and warned that 150,000 people could soon be left without safe drinking water. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Korhogo's water supply infrastructure had not been maintained properly since Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war and, following poor rains last year, the reservoir, which supplies the city, was nearly empty. Water cuts were frequent, with some parts of Korhogo going without piped water for up to three days at a time, OCHA said. Even when water did flow through the taps, it was dirty and polluted, OCHA said. “There’s also the problem that people are consuming more than they would normally as they are not paying for it. And this is making the situation worse,” Ibrahim Barry, a Humanitarian Affairs Officer with OCHA in Cote d'Ivoire, told IRIN.