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Ramadi gives grants to victims of ISIS crimes

By Khalid al-Taie

The United Iraqi Medical Society distributes grants to orphans in the city of Ramadi on May 4th, 2017. [Photo from the Ramadi Mayoralty Facebook page]

The United Iraqi Medical Society distributes grants to orphans in the city of Ramadi on May 4th, 2017. [Photo from the Ramadi Mayoralty Facebook page]

The Ramadi mayoralty announced on Wednesday (August 2nd) a new programme to assist families who were victims of the crimes committed by the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS).

The programme, funded by the UN Development Program (UNDP), gives financial grants to families that have lost their breadwinner as a result of terrorist operations, Ramadi mayor Ibrahim al-Awsaj told Diyaruna.

"As a first step, our aid programme will include 3,000 families, who will receive 500 dollars per family per month," he said, noting that the number of beneficiary families might increase in later stages of the programme.

The city "suffers today from the repercussions of terrorism, which has caused an increase in the number of widows to about 17,000 and more than 150,000 orphans", al-Awsaj said.

He said his administration is making efforts to erase the impact of ISIS's presence in the city by facilitating the return of displaced families and rehabilitating public service facilities.

"All displaced people from Ramadi have returned to their areas of origin [...] except for a small number who currently reside in [the Kurdish region], who have settled down there," he said.

"People preferred to return than stay in displacement camps or in rented houses and apartments despite the lack of services in the city and the damage that has befallen many of the houses," he added.

The focus currently lies on providing better services to those who return "with the financial means available to us", al-Awsaj said, with areas such as education, health, roads and bridges getting the highest priority.

"Reconstruction of a number of destroyed infrastructure projects in the city is now underway, such as the women and children's hospital and 15 out of a total of 200 schools, as well as eight vital bridges and water and electricity projects," he said.

Some of these projects are funded by the National Reconstruction Fund and others by the World Bank, UNDP and donor countries, he noted.

"Ramadi has suffered a damage rate of 82%," he said, stressing the need for greater international support for the completion of reconstruction plans, which "require huge funds, beyond the capacity of the Iraqi government and the budget allocated to the local Anbar government".

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