Sanaan Hassan and his wife, who are residents of Bekhuire village in the Deraluk district, have to travel by pickup truck to the district every day to get drinking water.
“We want water,” Hassan told Rudaw’s Hunar Rashid on Monday.
“This village has been evacuated because of a lack of water and people have all left,” he added and continued to say that his son moved away because of the water shortages.
Merge village, which shares the same border as Bekhuire village, faces the same issues and is now without proper cleaning water as a result of the stream water drying up. This used to be the source of drinking water for the village.
Ali Ahmad, a resident, told Rudaw that “we don't have drinking water and people are leaving the village. We used to have 20 households, but now we have six or seven households left.”
The survival of the villages relies on agriculture and livestock, but the water shortages have made this difficult.
Abdulrahman Ahmad, another resident said that “the people of this village live on agriculture and livestock, but now there is no water. I sold about half of my animals due to lack of water.”
Amedi District Water Division has prepared 130 million dinars for drilling a well and building a water network for the two villages, but they are waiting for the Duhok provincial administration to make the investment.
"After the drought, their water supply decreased. Haji depicted, “We visited both villages to dig a well and the project is about to be ready soon,” Bashar Haji, director of the Amedi District Water Division said.
According to the statistics of the Amedi District Water Division, out of 356 villages in the region, 157 have been provided with water, while 199 villages have not been provided with wells due to the fighting between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
