Detroit's decision to disconnect thousands of people from water services over unpaid bills was slammed by UN rights experts on Wednesday for violating the basic human rights of its struggling citizens, Agence France-Presse reported.
Cash-strapped Detroit, which became the largest U.S. city to ever file for bankruptcy protection last July, began to recently disconnect water services for all the households that were unable to pay their bills for two consecutive months, two experts stated. The process was accelerated since early June, with around 3,000 customers being cut off each week and some 30,000 households expected to be disconnected from water services over the next few months, they said.
"Disconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights," insisted Catarina de Albuquerque, an expert on the right to water and sanitation."The households which suffered unjustified disconnections must be immediately reconnected."
While cutting off services for people who are able to pay but choose not to can be justified, blocking a significant portion of the population who is unable to afford the relatively expensive cost of water in a city like Detroit, with its sky-high poverty and unemployment rate, is simply unfair, the experts stressed. "When there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections," Albuquerque said.
Albuquerque had previously pushed for the U.S. government to adopt federal minimum standards on the affordability for water and sanitation and urged Washington to take action to help protect families living in poverty against disconnections of water services.
Meanwhile, disconnections of water services were proving to have devastating consequences, with social services removing children from their homes after the water was cut off since their housing situation was no longer considered adequate, Leilani Farha, the expert on the right to adequate housing, said.
And "if these water disconnections disproportionately affect African Americans they may be discriminatory, in violation of treaties the United States has ratified," she warned.
