Work is under way at the Iraqi Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works to implement an emergency plan to rehabilitate the municipal services and infrastructure in regions and cities retaken from the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL).
The plan aims to "create suitable service conditions in the areas freed from ISIL, meet the needs of citizens in several municipalities and urban sectors, and ensure the return of normal life to those areas", ministry media advisor Jassem Mohammed Salem told.
The plan includes accounting for and assessing damages to facilities and infrastructure projects in the water, sanitation and municipal services sectors, he said, as well as their immediate repair per the ministry's available financial resources and capabilities.
He stated, "There are rehabilitation works we began implementing in some districts and counties, and others we already finished as is the case in Samarra, where our technical and engineering staff managed to repair and operate drinking water projects and lines and to reconstruct the city's municipal building, as well as complete a variety of municipal works."
ISIL halted large-scale, strategic projects such as the Abu Ghraib water project, which had a capacity of 10,000 cubic meters per hour and served more than half a million people, he said. Efforts are under way to address the problems and damage to this project and others in Salaheddine, Diyala and Anbar provinces, Salem said.
This year's delay in adopting a state budget law is one of the ministry's chief challenges to completing its investment projects, and to rebuilding and operating the affected projects, some of which need huge imported parts and more funding, he said.
Emergency Planning
The ministry has put all its resources and capabilities into providing the necessary service support to all recaptured areas and cities, said Dhiaa al-Baghdadi, director general of the ministry's department of municipalities.
He said, "We dedicated all our efforts to restart the water and sanitation plants and lines which stopped due to the sabotage and destruction they sustained at the hands of terrorists, as well as launched wide campaigns for cleaning, removing rubble and tree-planting using dozens of specialized vehicles and municipal cadres."
The reconstruction projects covered several recaptured areas, including Amerli, al-Dhuluiya and Jurf al-Sakhr, he said.
"We also have continuous service campaigns in different areas, the last of which was in the district of al-Mahmoudiyyah," he added.
The emergency services plan requires rehabilitating the infrastructure and providing support and services to any recaptured area, al-Baghdadi said.
"There is another advanced stage of work through which we will seek to create new municipal projects to develop the level of services and construction in those areas," he said.
MP Riyadh Gharib of the parliamentary services and reconstruction committee welcomed the efforts to restore municipal services to recaptured districts.
"These efforts are important as the people who have been affected by terrorism -- whose areas were subject to sabotage at the hands of criminal elements and who fought with honor against these elements -- today need support and assistance in order to ensure they have all basic services, particularly those relating to the water and sewage sectors," he told.
These ministries and relevant entities have the duty to serve citizens, alleviate their suffering and work to harness all human and other resources to promote services in their areas, he concluded.