Algeria held a telethon Thursday to raise money for survivors of killer floods which claimed at least 750 lives, but authorities were still strictly rationing domestic water supplies after weeks of drought.
State television broadcast a 30-hour telethon to raise funds for victims of the deluge, with satellite transmission of the programme across north Africa and into France, home to many immigrant Algerians.
The sudden storms of November 10 devastated part of Algiers, where some 700 people died in the Bab El Oued district, but failed to make any difference to water levels in the dams on which many people depend for supplies.
The two dams supplying the capital have received almost no water because of months of drought, the director of the National Dams Agency (ANB), Abdelnacer Khali said.
Authorities on October 7 imposed what is known as the Orsec emergency plan in Algiers, allowing water supplies only one day out of three, and for 15 hours on that day.
The Keddara dam serving Algiers is only filled to 12 million cubic metres of its capacity of 145 million, Khali said. Of that, only three million cubic metres can be used, he added, since the rest has to remain in the dam for technical reasons and to keep fish stocks alive.
ANB officials are planning to transfer three million cubic metres of water from the nearby Hamiz dam to create a reservoir of a total six million cubic meters to enable Algiers to "hold out" until January.
Khali added that authorities are also planning to pump water from the Mitidja farming plains south of the capital to Algiers.
Amid the shortages, some 1,500 people across Algeria, in the French cities of Marseille and Lille, and in Belgium, were taking part in the telethon, which began late Wednesday to help raise funds for flood victims.
Singers, artists and sports stars are seeking to raise 600 million dinars (eight million dollars). A little more than half that sum had been pledged by 12 noon (1100 GMT) on Thursday, halfway through the show.
The head of the Telethon 2001 association, Nourredine Belmihoub, said the money was "to buy or to build houses for all the families whose homes have been destroyed, but who have not been taken in charge by the authorities."
In Algiers, officials say that 122 people remain unaccounted for since a torrent of water and mud engulfed Bab El Oued and other districts, bringing vehicles and trees with it from higher ground, and burying buildings and cars.
But the storms that caused the tragedy were brief, bringing 210 millimetres (almost four and a half inches of rain) down on the capital in just hours at their heaviest on the Saturday of the tragic weekend.
Of the country's 48 dams, those serving the northeast are less full than in average years, but real hardship is faced only in the port city of Skikda, officials said.
In the northwest, supplies are higher than average, but rationing is still necessary. In the main western coastal city, Oran, officials plan to provide supplies for one day out of two.
Two days before the floods, people in the country's mosques had asked for rain, as part of recommendations made to Islamic prayer leaders by the ministry of religious affairs.
But little rain went into the dams, which this year have stocked only 1.5 billion cubic metres of water, half of what is needed, according to officials.
Many people in Algiers complain that the authorities have proved incompetent in dealing with both the drought and the storms. They say much water is wasted because the distribution system is old and in disrepair.
Drainage and sewing systems are equally bad and were overwhelmed in the storms, residents said – Algiers (AFP)
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