Ahmad Rahal, Baladi News, Idlib
The governorate of Idlib is suffering from a high population density, especially with the influx of the forcibly displaced civilians from most of the Syrian regions, putting it before new risks and difficult confrontations which are no less dangerous than the warplanes' bombardment that target its cities and towns on a daily basis.
In an exclusive interview with Baladi News, the Head of the Civil Council of Idlib and the director of Idlib's Chamber of Commerce engineer Ismail Anadani said that the huge numbers of the forcibly displace people created massive challenges such as water crisis because water resources are the same, but the number of consumers has doubled along with crowdedness in markets and the high demand on electricity.
Anadani pointed out that this increase in population has raised the rates of unemployment, which in turn has negatively affected the security state of the governorate leading to increasing rates of robbery and crime.
Anadani added that: "we in the city's council are trying to make a shift in the society by moving from the state of dependence on aid to the state of production and development in order to promote the economic situation through working on creating real job opportunities.
Anadani criticized the work of most "Civil Society Organizations" saying that they are lucrative companies with agendas and orientations that might contradict with our national ones, especially that Idlib used to suffer from a lack of effective presence of organizations under the pretext of not having a civil authority represented in a local council before, but now after we have formed the council of Idlib, we started to witness a gradual presence of those organizations.
Regarding the substitute plans for economic development, Anadani explained that they have launched a project for vocational learning and training that targets males and females with four different professions for each category.
Anadani called upon the expatriates of Idlib to launch a campaign in order to support their home town and demanded the wealthy expatriates to launch real initiatives and investment projects.
He also pointed out that the council has economic studies for development and investment projects and many others are being prepared in accordance with the current situation of the city.