ID49b earmarked for Missan marshes

MISSAN / IraqiNews.com: The Missan Provincial Council allocated more than 49 billion Iraqi dinars for the development of the province’s marshlands within appropriations reserved for the reconstruction of this area for the year 2011, a local official said on Thursday. “The ministry of state for the marshes’ affairs have allocated the sum of 49.900 billion dinars to set up service projects in the eastern and western marshlands in Missan,” Jasseb Kadhem Himdan, the chairman of the council’s marshes development committee, told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The projects focus on the fields of health, housing, education, electricity and communications and their appropriations will be released during 2011,” Himdan added. He pointed out that the ministry, during 2010, appropriated the sum of 70 billion dinars to refurbish the Missan wetlands, adding some 178 projects were carried out in the spheres of housing, agriculture, water resources, education, roads, electricity, water, sanitary sewage, health, communications and social development. The marshes in southern Iraq, the largest and oldest in the world, play a key environmental role in housing of indigenous and migrant birds. They stand over 15,000-25,000 kilometers. With a population of about 500,000 people, the marshlands shrank by one-tenth during the former regime’s time after all river courses were altered and dams were built to cut them into parts, a matter that prompted most of their inhabitants to emigrate. Missan lies 390 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (S) 79