State media shows Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi inspecting “Storage and Marketing halls and the grocery wholesale market” in Damascus to ensure the availability of vegetables and other food items.

As part of a broader propaganda effort to demonstrate the government’s ability to provide essential commodities to its citizens, Al-Halqi is pictured speaking to the press and investigating a very well-stocked series of market stalls.

al-halqi market

The government, according to al-Halqi, is “exerting sizable efforts” to maintain price levels and “provide a wide array of vegetables and fruit.”

He pointed out that the price movement as inspected Sunday at selling points indicates an abundance of basic commodities and an overflow of vegetables and fruit compared to an earlier period that saw disorder as to their amounts.

The Premier saw that the evolving consumer behavioral patterns lead to an abundance of items and make for affordable prices, which stresses the necessity that citizens rise to the current challenges and change their consumer culture.

The Prime Minister claimed that the price of food at wholesale and retail markets has dropped by 10-35 percent in recent weeks, attributing this development to “the stabilization of the security situation in several areas.”


Government to Implement “Integrated Humanitarian Relief System”

Minister of Social Affairs Dr. Kinda al-Shammat has declared that the government will introduce an “integrated humanitarian relief system” at the beginning of 2014.

During a workshop organized on Sunday, al-Shammat said that the system spans all the stages of the relief process, starting from the registration of displaced families to assessing the needs and requirements of the affected families.

The minister stressed the necessity of regulating the relief work according to the sectors included in the humanitarian response plan signed between the Syrian government and the UN humanitarian organizations in Syria.

Considering the sheer scale of the humanitarian crisis inside Syria — let alone in those countries that have been taking in more than two million refugees from the civil war — the Minister’s pledge looks anodyne at best.

The UN Refugee Agency is said to be seeking to provide vital relief items to 3 million internally displaced Syrians, as well as more general health care, shelter, financial aid and protection to hundreds of thousands of others.

In Mouadamiya on the edge of Damascus 1,800 civilians were able to flee last Tuesday, with the UN adding that 3,000 women and children had already fled.