A critical desalination plant supplying water to Oman’s capital has regained most of its production capacity, easing the cyclone-damaged Muscat’s water shortage, officials and news reports said on Tuesday.
Oman lost more than $200-million in oil revenues when exports were halted by last week’s Cyclone Gonu, an Omani official said in a report issued by Kuwait’s state-run news agency Kuna.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Oman rose to more than 50, Kuna reported, but it sited no official source for the figure.
The latest official update had a death toll of 49, with 27 people listed as still missing. A further 12 people died when the storm moved from Oman into Iran.
Water and electricity was restored to most of Muscat, said Seif al-Shabibi, an official at the Ministry of Housing, Electricity and Water.
The Ghubrah desalination plant, which supplies a large portion of the capital with drinking water, was restored to 90% of its capacity, plant manager Allen Conroy said in Tuesday’s Oman Daily Observer, a Muscat daily.
Oil Minister Mohammed bin Hamed al-Rumhy told reporters on Tuesday that all oil installations and oil fields in Oman were ”running very normally without problems”. He said oil exports had been halted only for two days, last Wednesday and Thursday.
Meanwhile, Sultan Qaboos chaired a Cabinet meeting on Monday night to review Gonu’s aftermath. He also ordered a fund-raising campaign for the cyclone’s victims and donated seven million riyals ($18-million) himself.
Gonu damaged at least 10 000 cars in Muscat, leaving insurance agents coping with a huge backlog of claims, according to the Dubai-based Gulf News.
The Omani government ordered the building of dams to protect the city from flash floods in the future, Oman TV reported. Flooding in Muscat was exacerbated by rainfall in the mountains directly behind the city, which was channelled directly into the city.
Oman’s weather centre has said that Gonu is believed to be the strongest and deadliest storm to strike Oman since 1977, when 500 people were killed. — Sapa-AP