2023-12-09 16:37:43
It is a partial victory, but a first for water subscribers in Mayotte where, due to an exceptional drought, water cuts can last fifty-four hours in a row. The Mamoudzou judicial court ordered, Friday, December 8, the Mahoraise water company (SMAE) to pay 1,000 euros in “compensation for moral damage” to six of its customers. The civil chamber further orders a “70% reduction in the price of the subscription and the amount of water consumption” in their favor from their formal notice at the beginning of November.
Read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers In Mayotte, the water crisis spills over into the courts
These six subscribers, members of the Mayotte a soif collective, took legal action against this subsidiary of Vinci, operator of the public water production and distribution market in the French department of the Indian Ocean, accusing it of providing water non-potable water from the tap and in a manner « discontinue ».
According to the recommendations of the regional health agency, users must boil it “as a precaution”. “It is established, decides the judge in his decision, that the plaintiffs suffer moral damage resulting for the subscriber from the partial non-performance of the obligation of SMAE which delivers water whose potability is neither proven nor constant, and, for the members of the household, from the available, as part of the operation of the public water service, water carrying significant risks of bacteriological contamination. »
“Precursors with courage”
The civil judge also holds, by ordering a reduction in the price of the bill, that the distribution of water “corresponds to barely a third of the time during which water should be distributed”. “It doesn’t matter that the State has announced that it will cover subscribers’ water bills,” he adds.
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“My clients are pioneers who had the courage to attack the person responsible for the water market,” observes Me Guillaume de Géry, their lawyer, deploring however that the judge “did not follow through with his reasoning”.
The court did not completely rule in favor of the six subscribers, who mainly requested the obligation under penalty for the SMAE to deliver bottled water (2.5 liters per person per day) to their homes. , the obligation to deliver water to the tap without cuts, or the payment of anxiety compensation of 3,000 euros corresponding to the risk of being infected by bacteria or the stress linked to waiting for results potability analyzes of tap water absorbed inadvertently.
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