The Ministers of Agriculture and Local Administration: The committees for assessing damages caused by fires will complete their work within a week

Damascus-Sana

The Ministers of Agriculture, Local Administration and Environment, Eng. Muhammad Hassan Qatna and Engineer Hussein Makhlouf, emphasized that the priority now, after extinguishing the fires that affected areas of the Lattakia, Tartous and Homs governorates, is to count the damage and compensate those affected, stressing that the damage assessment committees will finish their work within one week.

Engineer Qatana said in statements to Al-Suriya TV that a main committee was formed under the chairmanship of the governor in each governorate and a central committee at the level of the director of agriculture and technicians affiliated to him at the level of each administrative region and a committee of the activities in it was also formed in addition to forming a large number of groups at the local level to enumerate each Damage whether to forest sites, homes or fruit trees.

Engineer Qatana stated that these committees will start their work from this morning, and they have been given only one week to complete their work, indicating that the damages tables will be prepared in a nominal manner at the level of each individual or every family to determine the nature of the damage and the intervention that will be in the future to compensate it.

He explained that the fires caused damage to forest sites, a large proportion of the lands planted with olive trees and vegetables, and a number of greenhouses, pointing out that the high wind speed last Friday made the fires cause a loss of 600 hectares in one forest site and burned large areas of olive trees that are expected to be harvested by farmers.

Engineer Qatana pointed out that the severe blockade imposed by the United States of America and Western countries on Syria has caused an increase in the number of fires due to the lack of mechanisms necessary to deal with the fires and to clean the sides of roads from the remnants of inflammable weeds, as the siege and war caused disruption and part of it was damaged, which made the Ministry now work with Only 30 percent of the energy of fire fighting tanks.

Engineer Qatana stressed that the government is currently making great efforts to rehabilitate the broken tanks and support forests with new tanks and mechanisms.

For his part, the Minister of Local Administration and Environment said that after extinguishing the fires, the priority that is currently focused on is compensation for the damage as soon as possible.

Makhlouf pointed out that the tanks that used to work to extinguish and extinguish the fires and exceeded the need to cool them are now working to transport drinking water to the citizens in the affected areas until water reaches it through the networks.

In turn, the Minister of Electricity, Eng. Ghassan Al-Zamil, confirmed that all the electricity companies in Syria have been instructed to support the companies in Tartous, Homs and Lattakia, indicating that the electrical supply has been restored in Tartous and Homs and that the damage is assessed later.

Al-Zamil pointed out that the greatest damage was in the Lattakia governorate in Ras Al-Basit and Ballorin, and 95 percent of the electrical supply has been returned to it, and that the Qardaha area is the most affected, and electricity will be restored to it at the end of the week, and these areas will be exempt from rationing until further notice.

For his part, Minister of Water Resources, Dr. Tamam Raad, said that 24 sites were affected by the fires in the governorates of Lattakia and Tartous, and that Qardaha, Balorin and some sites of Ras Al-Basit are the most affected, indicating that work has been done to repair the damaged lines and pumping water, except for the countryside of Qardaha as a result of power cuts to the pumping stations Within a maximum of two days, water will be pumped to all areas.

Raad pointed out that drinking water is 90 percent available and that areas that suffer from water cuts are served by tankers as an emergency solution until the water is re-pumped to them.