when in Caracas not a drop comes out of the pipes

Jeanette Celis is anxiously awaiting the rain that falls on the depressed district of La Vega in Caracas one afternoon in late February. The water hasn’t come out for months when you turn on the faucets, like in most VenezuelaAnd the one falling from the sky just might fill the half-dozen empty tanks you have in your home.

On the roof of his house, a sheet of zinc transformed into a channel is capable of collect rainwater and divert it to a huge reservoir that you have outside the house.

“My husband is very smart at doing these things,” Celis told EFE, showing the rudimentary system, which is repeated in every house in La Vega.

“He managed to do that, (but it works) more than anything when it rains. Running water is impossible (to have),” adds the 41-year-old.

The problem is not just with this family. Independent organizations point out that nearly 9 out of 10 households in Venezuela face a severe shortage of drinking water, which adds to the lack of gas and blackouts which are repeated almost daily across the country.

Several meters higher, her neighbor Kimberly Bruzual tells EFE that she can’t remember the last time the water filled the pipes in her house and that she is not reserved because the rain she has could collect was exhausted a long time ago.

To alleviate the shortage, the 19-year-old had to fetch water in the lower part of the hill, where from time to time a tanker truck carries several thousand liters that must be shared among neighborhood families.

This water must be “reused”, says this woman, mother of a boy who has not yet reached two years.

“I wash the child with clean water, this water that I use later to wash the diapers and then I throw it in the bathroom,” he explains.

Bruzual also said that the water he raises with the cistern or in a neighbor’s house is the same water he uses for cooking or drinking. When it is very cloudy, he filters it with a thick cloth and boils it, but only if he has gas, because most of the time he cooks with the firewood he chops at the top of the hill.

Washing and cooking in cloudy water

In another part of the hill conquered by the district of La Vega, the worker Juan Millán bathes with his two sons in a stream called La Poza.

With a service so spotty that it only provides water a few times a year, you’d think La Poza will become a must stop for everyone in La Vega, but it isn’t.

In the neighborhood, they know that some houses dump their wastewater into this cove which often carries garbage or dead animals.

“Normally we use it (the water from La Poza) when the shortage arrives, for bathing and for the bathroom, for washing. We boil it and use it for cooking,” said Millán. at EFE.

“Right now, it’s like that (cloudy), but it always comes out white, white”, he adds before admitting that “never” has bothered to know where the stream comes from. or if the water is safe to drink.

“Sometimes we are in need because there is no water, here we already have about three months without water and we have to look for it, to collect it (in La Poza),” he says.

In the same situation, Jean Carlos Farías, a young man who says he is proud to be born and raised in La Vega 26 years ago.

As far back as he can remember, his family have consumed the water in La Poza. With it, they wash, cook, clean and even quench their thirst.

“My grandfather was a founder here and people have been drinking water from this place for years. They supposedly did a study on it and they said it contained minerals from the earth, which couldn’t be eaten like that, but everyone drinks nobody ever happened to him, ”he says.

Of course, Farías and his family take some precautions. They always boil the water before drinking it and only consume what is by the creek, where his grandfather installed a pipe that provides his house with a constant liquid about 20 years ago.

“If they drink from the other flowing (further down) there, I’m saying something might happen to people. This one is very bad, ”he says, convinced that the sewage from his house – including the bathroom – flows into the lower part of the stream.

A problem for nearly 90% of the population

Public policy expert and director of local NGO Ojo Avizor, Norberto Baussón, warns EFE that failure of piped water supplies, at best, affects, to nearly 9 out of 10 households in the country.

“The percentage by region varies between 87% and 99% of use due to the lack of water. This means that it is a national problem, not a problem linked to a region or a circumstance, ”he says.

According to the expert, poor management of the country’s aqueducts and the loss of qualified personnel due to the massive emigration of Venezuelans due to the economic crisis are the source of supply failures.

“We have installed, nationally, around 140,000 liters per second and today we can only pump more or less half, around 70,000 liters per second,” he explains.

He also points out that high areas, like the La Vega district of Caracas and hundreds of poor areas in the country, are the most affected.

Rarity and inequality

“The higher you are on the net, the more affected you are. The poorest do not have the resources to build alternative systems as many members of the middle class have. by other sources, such as deep wells or cisterns, which can be called up, say with their resources. “

With this scenario, millions of Venezuelans in the poorest neighborhoods can only wait for water to fall from the sky to fill their reservoirs, as is the case in La Vega.

And, as the neighbors say, for them, it is normal and even common to use rainwater, because the pipes where the water is managed by the state have been dry for months.

By Ron González, EFE agency

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