Tens of thousands of people in Ingushetia, including residents of the capital Magas, have been left without water for the second week in a row.
According to the republic’s state-run water supplier, the interruptions were due to repairs, accidents at water intakes, and weather, among other things.
According to the local media outlet Fortanga, issues with Ingushetia’s water supply have been recurrent for years — reportedly, more than 40 kilometres of water pipes in the republic are almost completely worn out.
At the end of June, Ingush Head Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov reportedly told Russian state news agency TASS that the issues were due to the improper laying of pipes back in the 1990s before promising to ‘completely solve the problem of water supply in the republic within the next four years’.
However, a few weeks later, following the latest spate of water supply interruptions, Kalimatov instead blamed the ‘abnormal heat, wear and tear of networks in certain areas, and irrational water consumption by residents’ as being behind the more than 2,800 interruptions that have occurred since 2023. He additionally blamed residents who did not pay for housing or communal services.
‘One of the reasons preventing the modernisation of the water supply system remains low payment discipline. In some areas, out of 57,000 subscribers, only 9,000 pay for services’, Kalimatov reportedly said.
As a solution, he stated that ‘mobile points will be organised in each city and village to accept utility payments and help with the preparation of documents for home ownership and land plots’.
Since early July, the Telegram channel United Operator has collected hundreds of dissatisfied comments from local residents, comparing their situation to life in Zimbabwe and calling on Kalimatov to deal with the situation.
Previously, in early January, the city of Karabulak, in central Ingushetia, was left without water for several days. In response, the chair of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, opened a criminal case on charges of negligence. In June, Bastrykin reportedly criticised the head of Ingushetia’s Investigative Committee, Akhmed Askhabov, for delays in the investigation.
Ingushetia is not the only North Caucasian republic to have recently seen water supply issues. In mid-July in Kabarda–Balkaria, residents of the Chegem district complained to opposition Telegram channel NIYSO that they had been without water for weeks, and that all their requests for aid were ignored.
Similarly, residents from multiple villages across Chechnya sent complaints to NIYSO about a lack of electricity and water.
‘It is 37 degrees outside and we have no water, people have to buy water, this has been going on for 20 years’, a resident of a village located 10 kilometres from the capital Grozny told NIYSO.
Elizaveta Chukharova
