Southern Iraq’s Provinces form a Joint Consultative Council to boost their services:

MISSAN / IraqiNews.com: Southern Iraq‘s Provinces have formed a Joint Consultative Council aimed at pushing the Federal and Local governments to boost public services in those provinces, amid demands to increase their share from the Petro-dollar allocations from one to five U.S. dollars for each barrel of petrol produced from the southern provinces, their spokesman, Karim al-Hassani said on Monday. “The Joint Consultative Council in the Southern Provinces aim at waging pressure on the Federal and Local governments to boost the service status in the southern provinces,” Hassani told IraqiNews.com news agency, adding that “joint meetings have been held in the southern provinces to coordinate their joint efforts in the important issues related to the citizens, especially in the services sector.” Hassani said that the southern Iraqi provinces “are still suffering from lack of services, despite fact that their economic significance lies in the fact that more than 90% of Iraq‘s oil revenues comes from those provinces, especially from Basra and Missan Provinces.” “There are demands by the Local governments in the southern provinces to increase their share from the Petrol-dollar from 1 to 5 U.S. dollars per each barrel of petrol produced from those provinces, because the amounts scored from those allocations are not enough to establish service projects for their infrastructure,” he concluded. Amara, the center of southern Iraq‘s Missan Province, is 390 kms to the south of Baghdad. YR (A) / SKH 72