People scramble for water across Venezuela

Residents across Venezuela are scrambling to find water, digging wells and exploring tunnels to locate any source to tap, an essential shortfall brought into full focus amid pervasive effects of coronavirus pandemic.

For some living in one low-income Caracas neighbourhood, situation is so dire that an abandoned construction site was seen as end of suffering.

Workers h long ago stopped building a nearby highway tunnel through mountain above m. Yet, spring water continued to pool inside viuct, n stream past ir homes, wasted. construction firm h also left behind coils of tube and or materials.

Neighbours rallied to salvage and build ir own rustic waterline, tapping into tunnel's vast lagoon and running essential supply to ir homes.

Today, y're free of city's crumbling service and enjoy what many in Venezuelan consider a luxury.

Or residents in Caracas rely on bottles filled from hose of a generous neighbour or government tanker trucks, but shallow, handme wells have also become an improvised solution.

Residents in this nation of 30 million complain ir public water lines in decline for deces continue failing.

A survey by Venezuelan Observatory of Public Services, a non-profit organization, estimated that 86 per cent could have unreliable water service, including an 11 per cent that have none at all.

same survey also says that in Venezualan largest cities, 65 per cent of population does not have enough clean water for basic hygiene to fight coronavirus under World Health Organization guidelines.

María Eugenia Gil, a clean water vocate and director of Caracas-based non-profit Clear Water Foundation, said Venezuela has vast natural water resources but nation's broken infrastructure fails to deliver it to people.

Access to clean water is a human right, she said.

pandemic has brought this dire shortage into focus as number of daily coronavirus illnesses grows in Venezuela.

Until Thursday about three dozen people have died of more than 4,000 people falling ill, according to official figures.

Gil said residents desperate for water have no choice but to break a nationwide quarantine and hunt for water and n stand in line waiting to fill ir bottles. This exposes m to virus or could spre it if people are alrey sick.

In a corner of a Caracas' shantytown called Petare, one of Latin America's largest, residents start garing at dawn once a week waiting for a government water truck to fill large blue barrels.

Officials started to deliver water a month ago to fight new coronavirus, but residents say y've lived nearly a year without running water.

Once ir barrels are full, y n have to move heavy lift of week's supply into ir homes.

Many carry a bucket at a time into ir home, a time-consuming job that requires labour of young and old.