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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Traders outraged over government rationing in Syria's Hama |
| 2021-03-20 |
| [NPASYRIA] On Thursday, traders in Syria’s Hama expressed their resentment towards the intensive campaign by ration committees of the Directorate of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection in several markets in the city in turn for bribes. According to previous reports, the city of Hama is witnessing corruption in many government departments, and officials extort bribes from residents and shop owners. The ration committee roamed in the market and asked most of the traders to pay money for violating prices, Abdullah al-Kharsa (pseudonym), a trader in Ibn Rushd market in the city. "This campaign aims to take money from traders; I paid 20,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) and my neighbor paid 27,000 SYP. Each one pays according to the violation that the committee threatens to write," he added. Trader Na’il Bashor said that the committees threatened to shut down shops, at the same time they forced several traders to open their closed shops. "Ration committee members threatened to write violations worth millions of SYP, but they did not after they took sums of money. We are forced to close our shops to avoid the loss," he added. Merchants face problems in securing the goods that are sold at a price, and they buy them at double price, not to mention the difficulty of securing them again due to the accelerated collapse of the Syrian pound against the US dollar. He pointed out that each hour, "companies issue new circulations and new price bulletins without any intervention by the Central Bank, to put an end to this rise, which is no longer possible." |
| Posted by:Fred |