People s Municipality in Qamishli cleans Jaghjagh river in city center
Reem Chamoun – Charbel Hanno
Qamishli’s People’s Municipality, in cooperation with the Health Board of al-Jazira region in northeastern Syria, launched a campaign to clean the Jaghjagh river, which comes from Turkey and passes through the city center of Qamishli, in the framework of the measures taken to prevent coronavirus.
Gaby Chamoun, co-chair of the People’s Municipality in Qamishli, said that after the outbreak of coronavirus around the world, and in order to avoid its spread in northeastern Syria, the municipality undertook several campaigns to clean and sterilize the main streets of the city, in addition to public facilities, places of worship and city buses.
He pointed out that the municipality’s work is now moving to the Jaghjagh river, which has become a source of pollution in the city.
“The campaign includes cleaning the riverbed, isolating the waste dumped in it and transferring it to the landfill in the village of Navkur near Qamishli city,” and after the completion of the cleaning process, the municipality will sterilize the river.
Chamoun explained that the cleaning process is difficult because there are residential houses on the banks of the river in some locations in the city, and it is difficult for the municipal machinery to reach these areas, in addition to the distance of the landfill from the river. The municipality is working to increase the number of machines involved in the cleaning campaign to end more quickly.
The Jaghjagh river crosses a distance of more than 100km before emptying into the Khabur River in the Hasakah countryside, but it became one of the biggest sources of pollution in the city of Qamishli as residents of adjacent neighborhoods dumped their waste in the river.
The river enters Syria coming from Turkey loaded with sewage pollution, to be even polluted more by the city, as buffaloes are raised on its banks, leaving an immeasurable amount of waste so that the city's residents complain about the unpleasant smell that comes from the riverbed, especially in the summer season, with germs and microbes gathering on waste thrown in the river.