Ministerial Decision 6/2019 issuing the Regulation of Drinking Water Service.

This Regulation consisting of 40 articles and 2 Annexes aims at organizing the responsibilities of the Public Authority for Water which is responsible for setting technical specifications for water sources, public and internal networks, and their connections and extensions. The Regulation deals with (i) maintenance of public networks, in particular concerning the necessary permissions for (1) excavation, cutting, or backfilling of land in areas with water networks, (2) connection or disconnection of networks, (3) prohibition of establishment of any permanent or temporary facilities or carry out any excavations or fill in or other works within the land on which the water line connections run, and (4) the safety of water sources, public networks and communications shall not be harmed or compromised; (ii) service access procedures, in particular (1) the Authority records the details of connections and allocates an account number to each subscriber, (2) service components are part of the infrastructure, and the Authority shall maintain and replace them at its expense, (3) the subscriber pays a fee to the Authority in return for providing the service and additional services, (4) the Authority may refuse the request to connect the service in the absence of the infrastructure or the necessary amount of water, (5) water tanks must be located for each property and a collective water tank in multi-unit buildings; (iii) service bills issued for water consumption according to the specified tariff. Other chapters deal among other things with (i) settlement of subscribers’ complaints; (ii) subscriber obligations, such as allowing authorized personnel to check the internal network, repair the leak, make the necessary maintenance on the site, take the meter reading, inspection, and replacement and other works that fall under the competencies of the Authority, and maintain the cleanliness of the site.