/17/ years of delaying, postponement and absence

it seems like the destiny of projects of touristic investment on the Syrian coast and especially in Tartus governorate is  to be ink on paper! There too many examples about that, and there are too many evidences in Tartus (developing and improving the island of Arwad – the sea side of Tartus city and its coast road – Jonada – Al-fadel suburban – hotels – the area of properties south of the city….etc)

But the strongest witness on that …the shameful one ,the clearest and painful …is the touristic project of Amrit  , that the agreement to establish it, was signed since 17 years exactly! Yes it is an example of wasting time and the lack of creditability of a united company in front of its contributors  and especially the regular ones from them ….and stealing their money in a way or another..

Also absence of seriousness and care from the company side and the government to solve the current problems and the postponing of investing tens of hectares directly on the beach....in addition to  carelessness , delaying and default.

The interested people in Tartus and the capital were very happy ,and made a big celebration with the companies of (ACGI) and (Transtour), and exchanged friendly words and promises when they put the basis of the project in the year 1984 . The inhabitants of the governorate became  very optimistic ,and all Syria in general  about the launching of the project and especially that the state contributed in it with the value of the land…so they bought at once the parts of contribution and became contributors in the Amrit company for touristic development and investment , but unfortunately they were shocked when they became sure that this company is not much different from money collectors , and the project that’s supposed to be established on the beach in Amrit city to the south of Tartus is still till now an (illusion) !!

For those who don’t remember the details of the project (although the “Economical” magazine has written about it before) we say: in  the year 1984 an agreement was signed between the ministry of tourism which was represented then by the minister Nawras Al-deker , and the company (ACGI)  ,its center in Dubai and it was represented by Abdul Aziz Saker, and also the company of (Transtour) represented by Saeb Nahhas . This Agreement was about establishing  a touristic investment company to study the constructing ,preparing, administration and investment of touristic structures in the Amrit area to the south of Tartus with capacity of /2000/ beds, parts of them should be put in investment in the year 1985 .  The highest council of tourism has signed this agreement with a few changes in it during its session number 92 on 31/07/1985 . According to a demand of the company , the law 13 for the year 1986  was released and it contained the signing of the agreement and the part /6/ of it determined the capital of the company with an amount of 168 000,000 Syrian Pounds distributed on financial and material parts as the following:

_Material parts for the ministry of tourism by 25%, which equals 42,000,000 Syrian Pounds instead of the land that has a space of 350000, square meters in the best site on the coast.

_ Financial parts for the company of (Transtour)  by 10% which equals 16,8 million Syrian Pounds.

_ Financial parts for the Arabic company for general  investments (ACGI) by 45% which equals 75,6 millions of Syrian Pounds.

_ Financial parts by 20% to be offered for the general subscription and equals 23,6 million  Syrian Pounds.

The company did some studies and ground settling and built a wall and stopped the work on the project for many reasons, few of them have a relation with the ministry of tourism and the argue with it about the increasing of the capital  and the redistributing of the ratios, and for other reasons which are related to (ACGI) , and its sloth to finance the project and search for local financing resources, and the rest of the reasons are about the non seriousness in continuing and finding solutions, also that the company (ACGI) broke a few branches of the (agreement) which was ratified by the law 13 in the year 1986…etc.

The serious disagreements began between the company and the Syrian government and got bigger ,especially after the meeting of the general exceptional society of the company on 09/10/1992 ,and in it the decision of the president of the administration council about financing the project was signed , and in the report the following was mentioned:

((After the finishing of the primary phases of the studies , we found out the total expense of our large and special project will be about 58,000,000 $ and it will be procured from the following recourses :

_  5, 000,000 $ which are the current capital of the company (235,000,000 S.P)

_ 5,000,000 $ by doubling the capital of the company .

_15,000,000 $ the result of selling /137/ beach houses from /317/ in total, which means 43,2 % from the beach houses in general. This ratio has gone over the maximum limit that was determined in the foundation contract, which equals 30%, and the ministry of tourism can agree with the selling according to the foundation contract.

_ 20,000,000 $ as local long-term loans (940,000,000 S.P)

_ 13,000,000 $ external loans and credit facilities or making some foreign sides contribute in financing the project or some of its activities and then participate in investing it))

Of course the dissents that the company did, means that the gulf capitals will not participate in the project, in the opposite of what was mentioned in the (ACGI) presentation in 1984 and in the agreement …instead of entering capitals from the gulf , 43% of the beach houses will be sold, just as if it became a company of real estate and not a company of touristic investment!!

The president of the company council Mr.Saeb Nahhas has put the load of delaying of the project execution on the government with all of its ministries and institutions and that was through the facts I mentioned in the warrant which delivered to the respectable prime Minster on 14/06/2001. in the warrant the reasons of delaying of the work on the project were mentioned by details  and he said :” Since it is the duty of each person in charge for activating the tourism sector  in Syria to ask and punish for delaying of a large developmental project from the projects of the common sector like the Amrit Project…that means that the small Syrian contributors and the big Arab contributors have the right to wonder about the reasons of delaying to define the responsible  about it,  to use their right of demanding compensations instead of the damages they had because of the delaying , because when they contributed in this project they were sure that the contribution of the state in such a large developmental project must give the following results:

_Supply with  all the needed facilities to finish it as fast as possible .

_ Removing all the obstacles that may stand in front of the execution of the project and that’s because the state has an observance of this project being done in the determined time since it is the largest touristic and developmental project on the Syrian coast “

Anyway we are not going to get into the details of the disagreements between the company and the government…and we are not going to make definite judges defining the sides behind the long delaying of the project.  …But we wanted to enlighten on a bitter reality maybe we can encourage the interested ones and the ones whom care about the benefit of this country and the projects of touristic and developmental investment in it… in the purpose of defining the responsible ones about the delaying and punishing them ,that’s from a one side…and from the other side to find suitable  solutions for current problems and disagreements and then launch the project that we wait for since a long time…

Will we be successful and hear good news about the project soon? We leave the answer for the coming days with emphasizing that the current situation must not stay as it is now, because who loves this homeland in any position can’t accept of leaving this project on hold … with what such situation brings from loses on the country and its economy, especially that the ministry of tourism has estimated that the gains of this project will reach 21,7 million $ annually!

(The following explanations and pictures are not part of the original text): 

Explanations of the primary points mentioned in the text:

 1-      “ And the company did some studies and ground settling and built a wall”

 In the following we will show pictures of the wall and the ground settling ,also  some structures inside the fenced area:

A small side from the big wall that surrounds the area and the entrance is appearing in the picture.	The wide area (notice the wall infar from camera to the right)which was settled and spread out by small stones after removing   all the ruins from it   (the picture was taken from a hill in the same area)
Some structures which were Built inside the wall, and the Work on them was stopped.	from the same hill, up in the picture, when looking towards east We find in front of us the antiquarian  spindles . (for more pictures check the album)

1-      “ Removing all the obstacles that may stand in front of the execution of the project”:

In the following we show samples of some of the obstacles that exist in the project area   inside the wall (the fenced project area is the area of the antiquarian port of Amrit)

A channel with a frieze, can be closed with a fictile cover (the existence of covered channels shows how civilized was the city of Amrit)	A long channel covered with a stone made cover
A portal structure the local people call it ((al khan)), they said it had a knotted ceiling and big stones which were cut and sold.	in front of the entrance appears a base of a pillar ,sculptured of sand stone.
The traces of the search squares that were made by Muhammad Raeef Haikal.	The ruins of residential structures are spread in the area.

All the showed ruins and more were discovered in that area before the “touristic” project,

Which was the topic of the article, nevertheless that didn’t stop the owners of the project from starting with it as we saw before, and the project was stopped only for the mentioned disagreements!!

The local inhabitants mentioned that some crowns and pillars of a palace were found and transferred to the museum . 

1-      “because who loves this homeland in any position can’t accept of leaving this project on hold …” 

How the spoilers and the gainers dare to define “the loving of the homeland”?

And is spoiling ruins and hiding the features of the homeland history considered love towards it?

Translated by: Anas Abbas