'Water Jihad Council' Launched as 25,000 Villages Go Without Drinking Water

Tens of thousands of rural villages across Iran don't have adequate drinking water, the Minister of Energy has revealed. Announcing the creation of a “Water Jihad Council" on November 2, Ali Akbar Mehrabian said as many as 25,000 villages were suffering a water crisis. "We have 650 large sewage and water supply projects in the country that are under-funded,” he explained.

Water shortages have prompted mass protests in recent months, with at least a dozen people killed by security forces during a fortnight of demonstrations in Khuzestan in July. Reports say that in the province of Kermanshah alone, 70,000 rural populations are without water.

This week's move followed an announcement by the director general of Sistan and Baluchistan Water and Sewer Company on October 18 that 2,510 villages with a total population of 256,000 lacked water facilities. On September 26, Mehran Ahmadi-Baloutaki, the head of West Ahvaz Health Center in Khuzestan, had also raised the alarm about rising cases of cholera and hepatitis A, as well as intestinal parasitic diseases and diarrhea, in the area, all of which he said was due to poor quality water. Where there were adequate water supplies, there were not enough of them and they were not being distributed efficiently.

The Minister of Energy promised the Water Jihad Council would help tackle the widespread crisis, chiefly by consolidating and integrating funds and facilities.

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