A year after its approval, the Council of Ministers approves the transfer of “Al-Rashid Camp” to sus

[size=52]A year after its approval, the Council of Ministers approves the transfer of “Al-Rashid Camp” to sustainable forests[/size]

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2024-08-18
For two decades, the Rashid Camp (formerly) in southeast Baghdad, adjacent to the entrances to its most important areas (Karrada and Jadriya), has been a hotbed of gangs and beggars, a site for child rape, a garbage dump, and a place for slaughtering dead livestock and even donkeys sometimes.[/size]
[size=45]A year after the Council of Ministers issued a decision to convert the land of Rashid Camp in Baghdad into green spaces, the Council of Ministers approved, on Sunday, the transfer of the land of Rashid Camp east of the capital, Baghdad, to tourist forest areas.[/size]
[size=45]The Rashid camp, which previously housed a military hospital, was destroyed after 2003, neglected and abolished by the Iraqi state, but its vast area remained without any reconstruction or new projects, and the plans for it remained on paper, including the establishment of a modern hospital and modern residential complexes, but none of them were implemented.[/size]
[size=45]This abandoned space was exploited by citizens to build houses that encroached on state lands, known locally as (Al-Hawasem), which led to the formation of a random area, which included many disintegrated families and some gang members.[/size]
[size=45]A statement from Al-Sudani’s office stated that “the Prime Minister chaired the thirty-fourth regular session of the Council of Ministers on Sunday, during which the latest developments in the country were discussed, and a number of economic and service issues were discussed, in addition to considering the topics on the agenda and taking the necessary decisions regarding them.”[/size]
[size=45]According to the statement, “Within the government’s efforts to organize the millions of visits to the holy shrines and provide their requirements, through the Permanent Supreme Committee, the Council of Ministers approved the following:[/size]
[size=45]1. The Prime Minister’s Office shall assign the ministries, governorates and other relevant entities to implement the components of the Million Visits Project, including the procedures for advertising, referral, contracting and supervision of the implementation of the work, according to each case (component) directed by the Prime Minister, and based on the availability of allocation and financial liquidity.[/size]
[size=45]2. The procedures for auditing the dues of the companies implementing the components of the Million Visits Project shall be the tasks of the sectoral bodies of the ministries, governorates and other relevant bodies, and disbursement, allocation and funding requests shall be within the powers of the Prime Minister’s Office in coordination with the Ministries of Planning and Finance.[/size]
[size=45]3. The Supreme Committee for Million-Person Visits shall coordinate with the ministries, governorates and other relevant authorities to select projects and complete the requirements for including the components of the Million-Person Visit Project with the Ministry of Planning. The authorities preparing these components shall bear the legal, accounting and technical responsibility in terms of preparing plans, designs, specifications and prices according to the nature of the work.[/size]
[size=45]4. The Supreme Committee for Million Visits will follow up on the project components during the announcement, referral, contracting and implementation stages.[/size]
[size=45]The statement added, "Within the framework of the government's vision for economic reform and activating the investment and development movement in the country, the Council approved the national strategy for bank lending prepared by the Central Bank of Iraq, including the recommendations and programs included therein."[/size]
[size=45]He pointed out that “the strategy aims to stimulate the growth of the Iraqi private sector by improving the business environment, attracting local and foreign investors, and increasing the credit granted to it from the non-oil GDP by 2029, in addition to increasing credit to small projects from the non-oil GDP, and financing nearly 100,000 projects.”[/size]
[size=45]The Council of Ministers voted that “the customs duty for containers larger than 40 feet shall be 4 million dinars.”[/size]
[size=45]In order to proceed and expedite the implementation of urgent service projects and the completion of infrastructure projects, it was approved to “exempt the Ministries of Construction, Housing, Municipalities, Public Works, Health, Higher Education and Scientific Research from the contracting methods stipulated in the Instructions for Implementing Government Contracts (2 of 2014) to implement projects related to infrastructure and establish educational hospitals based on solid and specialized companies.”[/size]
[size=45]In order to provide service and entertainment facilities for the people of the capital, Baghdad, the Council approved “referring the project to transform the land of Al-Rashid Camp, east of Baghdad, into sustainable and tourist forest areas, according to high specifications that are compatible with the environment, and investing the area designated for recreational activity only, and granting the investor an investment license to establish a residential complex of (12) thousand housing units, instead of the camp land, in the districts of Al-Dahna, Hekteria and Shaar, and 19 Ghazaliya, and canceling all previous allocations.”[/size]
[size=45]On the service side of the capital as well, the statement stated that “the Ministry of Finance was approved to allocate an amount of (21,980,040,000 dinars) from the emergency reserve to the Baghdad Municipality, regarding the direct implementation works of the Karkh/Al-Buaitha sewage water purification project based on the provisions of the Federal General Budget Law (13 of 2023).”[/size]
[size=45]As part of the ongoing preparations to conduct the general population census next November, the Council approved “the special requirements to equip the Kurdistan Region of Iraq data center with the necessary devices, equipment, licenses and servers to transmit the general population census data in the region’s governorates, from and to the main center in Baghdad.”[/size]
[size=45]The statement pointed out that, “In the process of completing stalled projects in all sectors, the following was approved:[/size]
[size=45]1- Promoting the required spare parts order and increasing the reserve amount for the project (implementing the infrastructure for (water, electricity, and communications) works with the first phase of (municipality and sewage) works for the allocation of 2375/ which is located behind (Yassin Kharbit/ allocation of the martyrs of the crowd), and adjacent to allocation 2373, and increasing the total cost of the main project in Basra Governorate.[/size]
[size=45]2- Increase the reserve amount and the total cost of the project (construction of the second Qurna Bridge).[/size]
[size=45]3- Increasing the reserve amount for the contracting company (development works of District 627 - University District, paving + water within the Mansour Municipality sector), and increasing the total cost of the project (paving main roads and residential shops) within which the contracting company falls.[/size]
[size=45]The Council also approved the identification of “the creditor companies concerned with the procedures for seizing and selling Iraqi real estate in France and the size of their debt, to avoid the operations of seizing and selling real estate in France,” according to the statement.[/size]
[size=45]The camp’s slums are inhabited by entire families who live off “begging,” as their children (boys and girls) spread out at the main road intersections in Baghdad, and they are required to bring specific amounts of money every day, or they will receive “severe punishment.” There are also dozens of cases of sexual and physical assault that have occurred to teenage boys and girls at the hands of their families and relatives, and in front of the eyes and ears of the security services, but they have not taken any action,” according to one of the camp’s residents.[/size]
[size=45]Member of the Parliamentary Services Committee, Daoud Eidan, confirmed in a previous report to “Al-Alam Al-Jadeed” that “what we have identified in all previous government procedures is the existence of private interests, and the parties belong to themselves and not to the country, so we will no longer allow the establishment of a project based on partisan and personal interest, neither in the Rashid camp nor anywhere else.”[/size]
[size=45]It is noteworthy that the head of the National Investment Commission, Sami Al-Araji, announced on August 13, 2018, the start of investing in the lands of Rashid Camp in a step aimed at solving the housing crisis in Baghdad, as an Emirati company will soon begin building seventy thousand housing units on the land of Rashid Camp after reaching an agreement with it, stipulating the construction of sixty thousand housing units vertically and with different designs, and ten thousand other units horizontally.[/size]
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