Marshland bridge projects given to local company – ministry

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi transport ministry referred a tender to implement a number of railway bridges in the marshland areas to a local company, a ministry source said on Friday. “A tender to build a number of railway bridges in the wetlands areas was given to the company at a value of 4.871 billion Iraqi dinars ($4.2 million),” Jawad al-Kharsan told IraqiNews.com, adding the project will take one year to finish. “These bridges fall within the Hilla-Samawa-Ghobeisha railway line project, which aims to revive these areas that suffered from displacement, to lend these cities a tourist feature,” he said. The marshes, located in the southern areas and constitute the natural basin for the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries, have formed thousands of years ago from water feeding these two rivers. The most important of these marshes are al-Hammar, al-Huweiza and al-Ahwar al-Wusta, in addition to another group of marshes nearly connected and distributed over the provinces of Basra, Thi-Qar and Missan over an area of 3 million donums (one Iraqi donum is equal to 1,000 meters). AmR (P) 1