Farman Abdulrahman, a resident of Darbandikhan, collects empty cans every two days and visits the well to fetch safe drinking water.
“People in Darbandikhan have struggled to get clean drinking water for over 20 years. You have to plan then come and queue here for more than a few hours until you get a few cans of clean drinking water,” Abdulrahman told Rudaw on Tuesday.
In 2013, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) decided to build a water treatment plant to address the drinking water problem in Darbandikhan town.
The plant was supposed to be completed within a year, but it has yet to be finished.
“The company has resumed operations, but all that remains is to receive their financial entitlements in the next couple of weeks and start ordering and bringing in materials,” said Bakhtiar Tahir, director of water resources of the towns around Sulaimani.
The Darbandikhan dam is the primary water source for the residents. However, the residents claim that sewage contamination from Sulaimani and Sharazur makes this water unsuitable for drinking or bathing.
The Darbandikhan dam, inaugurated in 1961 on the Sirwan River, supplies electricity to several cities and regulates water supplies to vast farmlands in Garmiyan and central Iraq. The dam has a capacity of three billion cubic meters of water.
The dam was last full in 2019, but would later experience years of drought due to lack of rainfall, exacerbated by the dams built on upstream rivers in Iran.
