Damascus- Hundreds of families crowd around their belongings, sitting, standing and lying for hours in the heat of the afternoon or the cold of the night, without roofs, mattresses or quilts, and often without food, waiting for their turn in the “line of buses” designated to transport them to their new place of displacement.
With this description, Bashar (53 years old) summarizes the suffering of hundreds of Syrian and Lebanese families displaced to Syria at the border crossings on the Syrian side, amid the limited means of transportation allocated by official authorities to transport them to shelter centers or city centers, and the unprecedented rise in the cost of private transportation, which makes… Waiting for hours or days in these unqualified areas is an emergency option for many displaced families.
Bashar, a fifty-year-old taxi driver, said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net, “We were already suffering from a gasoline crisis even before the start of the war on Lebanon, but after that the crisis intensified, because most of the gasoline available on the black market was coming to us through Lebanon, before smuggling stopped with the beginning of the war.” “.
Bashar points out that the price of a liter of gasoline has doubled compared to its price before the recent Israeli aggression on Lebanon, which prompted taxi drivers to double their wages inside the cities, while others took advantage of the wave of displacement and the need of displaced families for means of transportation to take them to their destinations in Syria. , raising the price of the trip to “unreasonable levels” that prevent most displaced families from being able to afford it.
Additional suffering
Jaber (34 years old), a Syrian displaced from Lebanon to Tartous recently, says that he and his family (4 members) spent two full days outdoors on the border waiting for their turn on buses allocated by the Damascus Governorate and some non-governmental organizations to transport the displaced to their next destinations.
He added, “We were displaced and in my pocket were only two million Lebanese pounds (about 23 dollars), and the amount was only enough to feed us twice, at a time when Syrian taxi drivers asked for between one million and 200 thousand Syrian pounds (80 dollars) and one million and 600 thousand (110 dollars) as fares.” We were transferred to Tartous.”
The cost of transporting one passenger from the Syrian border areas to his next stop ranged between 350,000 and 600,000 Syrian pounds ($23-40), depending on his destination and its proximity or distance from the border area.
This reality forced the Jaber family, along with many other displaced families, to wait for their turn in trips run by the governorate and organizations for free, which may take days to arrive, given the worsening fuel scarcity crisis that the regime-controlled areas are suffering from, and the exponential increase in the number of displaced people over the past week.
The Deputy Governor of Damascus, Muhammad Krishati, had announced to local media – coinciding with the influx of displaced people to the border areas a few days ago – that the governorate had prepared “several buses” to transport those arriving to Damascus from the Jdeidet Yabous crossing, as part of the government’s response plan to the wave of displacement from Lebanon against the backdrop of The recent Israeli aggression.
For its part, the Syrian Red Crescent Organization announced, the day before yesterday, Friday, that it had provided safe transportation for the displaced at the Jdeidet Yabous crossing, without mentioning the number of buses or buses allocated to transport them, in the wake of the Israeli bombing of the vicinity of the Masnaa crossing in Lebanon, which is opposite the Jdeidet Yabous crossing on the side. Syrian.
A few days ago, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati estimated the number of people displaced as a result of the ongoing Israeli strikes in Lebanon at about “one million people,” considering that this displacement may be “the largest” in the country’s history.
Stifling crisis
The suffering of the displaced is nothing more than one of the many forms of suffering caused by the fuel crisis for Syrians in regime-controlled areas, which has worsened to an unprecedented extent since mid-September, in light of the reduction in government allocations of gasoline and diesel to the public and private sectors.
This led to the paralysis of public transportation in most governorates and major cities, the high prices of most goods, and prompted students and employees to miss their universities, work, and jobs due to their inability to pay the costs of their transportation via taxis, the prices of which have doubled recently.
Nisreen (41 years old), an employee in one of the general directorates in Damascus, said about the reason for her absence from her job to Al Jazeera Net, “The transportation situation in the country is no longer acceptable. Sometimes we wait for a full hour at the stop and we do not find a microbus to take us to our work, and if we take a taxi, Its daily cost will be twice as much as the salary.”
With the government’s allocations of fuel decreasing significantly, and the smuggling of gasoline from Lebanon to Syria being interrupted due to the Israeli aggression, fuel prices on the black market are witnessing a significant increase, with the price of a liter of gasoline in Damascus and its countryside reaching 27 thousand liras (about two dollars) instead of 13. One thousand (about a dollar) at the beginning of the year, while the regime’s government raised the price of a liter of diesel fuel, a few days ago, by 150% to reach 5,000 liras instead of 2,000.
Most public parking lots, in the capital, Damascus, and its countryside, during rush hour, are crowded with passengers waiting in the heat for any means of transport to arrive to take them to their homes, and when it arrives, they crowd at its door in the hope of getting a seat that will save their time, which is being burned on the stove of these parking lots.
Some private transport companies were also forced to cancel their trips between governorates, because they did not receive their full allocation of fuel, such as the “Trojan” and “Adra” companies, which caused varying harm to citizens who were stranded outside their governorates, and were unable to reach them until days later.
High prices and constant suffering
For his part, the head of the Committee of Vegetable and Fruit Traders and Exporters, Muhammad Al-Akkad, indicated to the semi-official newspaper “Al-Watan” last September that the fuel crisis led to an increase in the fees for transporting vegetables and fruits from the producing governorates to the Al-Hal market in Damascus by nearly 100%.
This led to an increase in the prices of various vegetables and fruits, which are considered the mainstay of the diet of millions of Syrians in regime-controlled areas.
This crisis was also reflected to varying degrees in the prices of the remaining basic commodities in Damascus and its countryside, which are often imported from other governorates.
Millions of Syrians in regime-controlled areas struggle to move, buy basic needs, and obtain basic services in light of low wages and monthly salaries that do not exceed $25 in the public sector, and $80 in the private sector.
90% of them live below the poverty line, while about 12.1 million people in Syria, more than half of the population, suffer from food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme.
