Hommam Al Nassim 
Protests broke out on the first and second days of Eid al-Adha in several areas of Tiaret Province, western Algeria, due to the failure to solve the problem of drinking water cuts, despite the government’s promises to eliminate the crisis before the Eid, at the request of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Several pages and accounts on social media spoke of renewed “protests and road closures” in Tiaret (280 km southwest of Algeria) in front of cars on Sunday and Monday, the two days of Eid, in which water is widely used after the slaughter of sacrifices.
The sources pointed in particular to National Road No. 14 between Frinda and the city center of Tiaret, and the pictures also showed the placement of stones and barricades to prevent the passage of cars.
The residents of the 220 Sakan neighborhood also closed the road linking the city center of Tiaret to the municipality of Bousheqif, about 18 km away.
On the official page of the Algerian Water Company, which is responsible for distributing drinking water in Tiaret and other states, one of its followers commented, saying, “Your promises to the residents of Tiaret state were in vain. On the first day of Eid, several areas were without water??”
In Al-Rahwiyah, about 40 kilometers away, activists published, on Monday, a video of a gathering of citizens, the publisher of which said it was of protesters who “prevented the governor from leaving the district headquarters before he listened to their concerns” regarding the water crisis.
The governor visited the area after night protests in which car tires were burned on the first day of Eid al-Adha, according to the “Sawt al-Rahwiya” page.
Since May, the semi-desert state has witnessed a severe crisis in the provision of drinking water after the Bakhda Dam, the only source of water supply to the region, dried up, causing the outbreak of violent protests.
The crisis prompted President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, at a time when early presidential elections were being prepared, to hold a meeting of part of the Council of Ministers on June 2, during which he ordered “the Ministers of Interior and Irrigation to develop an urgent and exceptional program… within 48 hours at the latest.”
Indeed, the next day, Ministers Ibrahim Murad and Taha Darbal went to Tiaret and presented a plan to solve the water problem “before Eid al-Adha.”
On Friday, the Minister of Irrigation returned to Tiaret in order to put into service a project to supply the city of Tiaret with ten thousand cubic meters of well water that was drilled and connected to the network within two weeks.
This appears to have resolved the crisis in the city center, but other areas are still suffering, according to residents’ complaints on the “Algerian Water” page.
Since the election of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in December 2019, protests have declined for social or political reasons, but the water crisis in Tiaret has brought back fears of the return of demonstrations against the authority, which wants to maintain calm before the presidential elections on September 7, for which Tebboune has not officially announced his candidacy.
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