DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – During the recent fuel crisis in government-held areas accompanied by the absence of transportation and the government’s failure to find solutions, individual initiatives have spread to help people find transportation.
Drivers rushed to transport passengers for free in an individual initiative to ease citizens’ suffering during transportation amid the lack of transportation.
Free minibus and cars
Two taxi and minibus drivers in Damascus transported passengers for free in an attempt to recreate the “On the Way” initiative which spread in 2019, when private car drivers announced their travels on private Facebook groups to drive the passengers on their routes.
Alaa Abdulrahman, a barber working in Jaramana neighborhood, told North Press that a minibus driver on the Jaramana-garage Sit Zeinab road has driven him and all passengers for free.
Mahmoud Suleiman (a pseudonym), a taxi driver in Damascus, said he is contributing to driving the passengers for free whenever he travels among Damascus neighborhoods or to Rif Dimashq.
”I drove more than 20 passengers waiting on the roads in Damascus, and I did not lose anything as I drove them on my way; in the end we are the citizens of the same country and we have to feel for each other’s’ suffering,” Suleiman said.
Good deeds
The taxi fare from Bab Touma Square in Old Damascus to President’s Square in Jaramana reached 1,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) per passenger, before being raised to 2,000 SYP with the recent crisis.
Tony, whose picture of his ” Saipa” car was shared on social media by Syrians, presented a human glimpse that is rare in Syria today, as he takes the initiative to transport passengers in Damascus for free at a time when the Syrians struggle to find means of transportation.
Syrians suffer from a suffocating crisis in transportation amid the lack of fuel and its high prices in the black market, which has led to thousands of Syrians being stranded on the roads.
The number of minibuses has decreased due to the shortage of fuel allocations or the owners’ resorting to selling them at double prices.
However, Tony chose a different attitude, as he told a North Press correspondent that ”he works for the sake of God” and tries to do what he can to relieve the ‘destitute,’ refusing to be photographed or even introduced by his full name.
He only introduced his self as the ”son of Maaloula” in Rif Dimashq, and resides with his family in Jaramana.
He pointed out that he transports people for free twice a day, ”from Jaramana to Bab Touma Square at 7 a.m. and from Bab Touma Square to Jaramana at 5 p.m.”
The transportation lines to Jaramana pose an insurmountable dilemma, even before the recent fuel crisis, where the stops and vehicles are exposed to great overcrowding, especially during peak hours.
All this, along with the fuel shortage in recent days, led to the formation of a double crisis and the exploitation of taxi drivers.
However, Tony, Suleiman, and others refuse to get paid even the price of gasoline, pointing out that they are part of this ”destitute” people and feel what every Syrian feels in these difficult circumstances.
They stress that “good deeds require a living conscience and a feeling the people’s suffering, especially with the advent of the blessed month of Ramadan, in which such humanitarian initiatives that are considered to be the heart and soul of this month must be intensified.”