Four violations recorded on Disi water project

AMMAN — A total of four violations have been recorded on the Disi Water Conveyance Project in Karak's Khatraneh, one of the Kingdom’s strategic water resources, according to the Ministry of Water and Irrigation, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The Ministry of Water and Irrigation/Water Authority on Monday said that following a tip-off about illegal pumping from Disi, a security campaign was formed which cited four violations of water tankers filling up illegally from Disi at night and selling the water to people.

The ministry called on the public to verify the source of water purchased from water tankers, and to ask the owner of the tanker to provide them with a stamped receipt that shows the source of the water.

To curb this phenomenon, the statement drew attention to the authorities' intensive inspections, noting that the water authority's new Penal Code has toughened punishments against water thefts and network sabotage, as well as selling or buying water illegally.

During the first six months of this year, the ministry recorded 61 violations and acts of sabotage over the Disi project’s facilities, despite the state-assigned patrols to protect the project’s components.

The latest violation on the Disi project happened early last month, when authorities reported the largest and gravest violation that the project has witnessed since its construction started in 2009, which caused a major and direct disruption of water supply to hundreds of thousands of subscribers in Amman, Zarqa, Russaifeh, Ajloun, Irbid, Mafraq and Jerash, which receive the precious fossil water of the Disi aquifer, located some 350 kilometres southeast of Amman near the Jordanian-Saudi border.