At a Cost of One Million Dollar: Service Projects in Rural Idlib’s Hass Town

  • 2018/11/13
  • 3:04 pm
Paving the roads with asphalt at the town of Hass, rural Idlib – November 2018 (Enab Baladi)

Paving the roads with asphalt at the town of Hass, rural Idlib – November 2018 (Enab Baladi)

The local council at the town of Hass, rural Idlib, has announced a number of service-related projects, covering various affected sectors, all under the “development” program.

The projects covered the water sector, schools, bakeries and paving roads according to what the Head of the Local Council Jamil Khider has told Enab Baladi, considering that the most important thing, as he sees it, is the renovation of schools and the construction of new ones in the town, for the schools suffered the shelling that targeted Hass and were partially or completely destroyed.

Hass “Development” Is about to End

In mid-2017, the local council at the town of Hass launched the “Development” program for the rehabilitation of service-related projects in the town, destroyed by the bombardment. Since then, the council has been starting projects in various sectors and are all about to end, according to Khider.

He added that they have approached the projects with a definite set of priorities because certain sectors were severely destroyed, according to a survey that covered the town’s people.

Among these projects is the water project, through which 90% of the town’s houses are provided with tap water, according to Khider.

The town’s bakery was rehabilitated through providing it with 90 tons of flour and 16500 liters of fuel. So far, 75 tons are grinded and baked, for Khider pointed out that the bakery’s returns were recycled and used for buying more flour as to increase the amount of daily bread.

As for the renovation of schools’ program, it covered the five schools that suffered bombardment, in addition to building a new school at the mountain area, affiliated with the Hass town, which is a modern expansion area, where students are forced to walk long distances to reach the town’s schools.

The “Massacre of the Pens”, which happened on October 26, 2016, is considered one of the most famous, where the regime aircraft targeted a school gathering with eight missiles, leading to the death of 41 people, including 18 students.

Within the context of the “Development” program, a mall was built in the town of Hass, the cost of which is estimated at 62 thousand dollars, in addition to a training and vocational initiation center for the town’s women. The council also implemented a project of buying machines, including a heavy dozer excavator and dump trucks.

In addition to this, the program included projects relating to the rehabilitation, cleaning and paving of roads with asphalt, along with the sewage system project that is yet under implementation.

The Head of the Local Council Jamil Khider pointed out that the projects have in total costed a million dollars, the equivalent of about 450 million Syrian pounds.

Suliman Ziadan, from the town of Hass, said that the projects were necessary, and they have all came as an answer to the services needed by the town, despite what he referred to as “favoritism” sometimes.

The town of Hass is suffering destruction and the deteriorating service reality due to the Syrian regime’s shelling that targeted it in the past a few years.

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