An urgent appeal from CMWU to allow the entry of fuel for water facility generators, warning of a complete shutdown within 48 hours threatening the central and southern areas.
Urgent and Emergency Appeal
Allowing the Entry and Supply of Fuel to Operate Electric Generators for Water and Sanitation Facilities
Amid the tragic conditions that continue to strike every aspect of life, as a result of the grinding, brutal war ongoing across all areas and governorates of the Gaza Strip for nearly twenty months, which has surpassed the threshold of humanitarian catastrophe many times over, and with the complete cutoff of electricity supplies and the targeting and destruction of more than 80% of the infrastructure of water and sanitation facilities and services, and its catastrophic, devastating repercussions from an operational, environmental, and health standpoint, and on the ability to sustain the lives of most residents and displaced persons, who have been kept under pressure and in a state of continuous displacement toward areas lacking the minimum requirements for life and water and sanitation services, the need has become more than a life necessity to maintain life-saving services by securing a minimum level of water supplies, through the urgent securing of the fuel quantities needed to operate the electric generators at the various facilities available for producing water from wells and desalination plants, as a life necessity in the various residential areas and shelter and displacement centers.
It is worth noting that CMWU, in coordination with the Palestinian Water Authority and in cooperation with all partner and active international institutions, has continued and remains committed, throughout the war and in line with its mandate and responsibilities, to securing a diesel fuel distribution management program for all the well facilities, pumping stations, and desalination plants operating in the Gaza Strip, to secure the electric generators at these facilities in a way that ensures an acceptable operational state during emergency periods and achieves the minimum level of life-saving services, sparing population centers and displacement gatherings further suffering from reaching a state of thirst, which is now rapidly approaching amid the acute shortage of fuel supplies threatening the shutdown of desalination plants, water wells, and water transport tankers within the next 48 hours at the latest, particularly in the central and southern governorates.
The fuel currently available to operate the electric generators at water and sanitation facilities is not enough for more than 48 hours, and the absence of urgent intervention to prevent the complete shutdown of these facilities will place the lives of residents and displaced persons at the center of a state of severe, life-threatening thirst amid the tragic conditions they are living.
Based on the above, CMWU urgently and emergently appeals to and calls upon all active international and local parties, and everyone with the relationship and ability to help, to pressure the Israeli side to allow the entry, supply, and securing of the fuel supplies needed to operate the electric generators for water and sanitation facilities, which has become a life necessity amid the complete cutoff of electricity supplies since the beginning of the war, in order to avoid further tragedies and crises in the event of an outbreak of severe thirst, contamination, and the spread of infectious diseases amid the steady collapse of the general health situation in residential areas and displacement areas.
