300,000 without water for six hours

Panama’s water  supply woes returned on Wednesday, March 2, when 300,000 residents were left without drinking water for six hours.

This time the fault lay not with the water authority (IDAAN) but with a contractor working on the construction of the Metro rail line.

A  24-inch pipe pipe was broken while a soil test was being carried out on Transístmica, 300 meters from the Estrala Azul  plant  in Pueblo Nuevo. 

Spokeswoman for the Idaan said that to allow for work to be done on the broken pipe a  54-inch pipe had to be closed to reduce pressure. The operation affected 60 000 connections in the districts of Panama and San Miguelito for around six hours.