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AMMAN — A protest by University of Jordan (UJ) students against a decision to raise tuition fees for the international, postgraduate and parallel programmes entered its ninth day on Monday.

Since the beginning of March, students from UJ and other universities around the Kingdom have been gathering in front of UJ’s administration building on campus to protest the decision, which was announced about three years ago.

The decision increases tuition fees by 100 to 180 per cent for the parallel and post-graduate programmes.

Alaa Hajjeh, an activist at the university, said on Monday the protesters insist on their demands and reversing the decision.

“The protest is within the framework of many activities done by the students to call for reversing the decision,” he said.

Hajjeh added that the sit-in, organised by the Student Rally for the Cancellation of the Tuition Fee Hike group, is a step towards safeguarding students’ rights.

“It is a way to express our rejection of the decision, and we are here to stay until the university administration reverses the decision; many students cannot afford the raise.”

Protesters have been sleeping on campus over the past few days.

However, the university administration has provided students with “a clear response”, according to the protesters.

The Student Observatory said in a statement that students have the right to reject the decision and express their opinions.

The statement also said accusing the protesters of “disturbing” the atmosphere of the university is a form of limiting the rights and freedoms of students.

The student rights group urged Parliament and the authorities to follow up on the issue and to support the protesters as they “ask for their rights” and “ensuring a better future for students”.

Protesters said campus security is not allowing students to enter the university to protest and it is difficult for students to get blankets at night.

The university administration was not available to comment on the protest on Monday despite several attempts by The Jordan Times. 

UJ President Ekhleif Tarawneh previously stated that the protest is “unjustified” and is affecting lectures. 

According to Tarawneh, UJ has a deficit of JD20.5 million, for covering the education costs of around 67 per cent of the students enrolled in the regular programme and other scholarships.

The president said UJ, which has some 43,000 students, spends JD700 on each post-graduate student.

Later on Monday, Tarawneh released a statement after the board of trustees met with a number of students, saying discussions covered ways to support excelling students in the parallel programme.

A committee was formed to examine this issue further, the statement said, calling for ensuring that students will remain supportive of the administration.

Adnan Badran, chairman of UJ’s board of trustees, said in previous remarks to The Jordan Times that raising fees is the “only choice” for the university as the government does not support it financially as it used to, adding that post-graduate studies are “optional”.

He noted that around 65 to 70 per cent of students at the university are enrolled in the regular programme, which means the tuition fee hike does not affect them.

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah on Sunday stressed that Jordan is off-limit to terrorists and extremists, renewing his confidence in the ability of the Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army (JAF) and security agencies to protect the country.

During a meeting at the Royal Court with dignitaries from Karak, His Majesty expressed his condolences to Jordanians over the death of Major Rashed Zyoud, who died last week in a security raid targeting terrorists in Irbid, and wished Zyoud's injured colleagues a speedy recovery.

His Majesty commended the role of JAF and security institutions' personnel for “working day and night to safeguard the Kingdom and its people”, according to a Royal Court statement.

On the global war against terrorism, the Monarch said: "It is our war in Jordan and in all Arab and Islamic countries against khawarej (outlaws of Islam), and it is not only in Syria and Iraq but also in Libya, eastern and western Asia and Africa; it is a world war."

He also highlighted the importance of fighting the extremist ideology –and terrorist organisations it produces – through mosques and educational institutions, underlying the role citizens play in confronting these ideologies.

Shifting to other challenges facing the nation, the King reaffirmed that the priority is to address economic woes, mainly poverty and unemployment in the Kingdom.

His Majesty added that  there are opportunities at hand for Jordan to benefit from the recent London donor conference, noting that the US administration is willing to cooperate with several countries, especially European partners, to help the Kingdom capitalise on the conference's outcome through attracting more foreign investments.

Outlining projects realised or in the pipeline aimed at improving the economic and social situation in Karak, Royal Court Chief Fayez Tarawneh said relevant authorities plan to revamp the cave which houses the remains of the 1910 anti-Ottomans Karak uprising’s martyrs in a town in the region called Iraq, in addition to opening a road leading to the location and establishing a public park with a memorial monument in memory of the martyrs.

Tarawneh also announced Royal makrumas (initiatives)  to establish 38 residential units for impoverished families, in line with priorities set by Social Development Ministrys, as well as establishing a vocational school in the governorate, which lies some 140km south of Amman.

He noted that the Governorate Development Fund has financed seven projects in the area, generating 300 jobs to local residents. Tarawneh added that more funds will be allocated to municipalities to start income-generating projects. 

As for the youth and sports, the official said that under Royal directives, a gymnasium was built at the Prince Feisal Sports Complex, in addition to seven youth centres, three football fields and eight club headquarters.

In this regard, Tarawneh noted that a branch of Zaha Cultural Centre will be established in Karak in coordination with the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation.

Former prime minister Abdul Salam Majali called for investing in the historic, religious, archaeological and touristic features of Karak Governorate to stimulate inbound tourism. He suggested setting up a local council to be in charge of implementing related policies.

For his part, Karak Mayor Mohammad Maaytah highlighted the importance of declaring Karak as a development zone and implementing new development and service projects. 

Karak Chamber of Commerce President Sabri Dalaeen presented several demands, including full lighting for the road extending from Qatraneh to the governorate’s entrance, and filling in vacancies in some medical specialisations at the Karak Public Hospital.

Head of women’s committees in the district, Maysoon Mubaideen, called for building offices for her organisation and intensify efforts to empower women economically.

Ali Soub, speaking on behalf of the youth sector, said young people look forward to benefiting from all available resources in Karak like investing in oil shale and renewable energy, and improving infrastructure and services.

AMMAN — The Lower House on Sunday endorsed the Upper House’s amendments to the 2015 elections law, the last in a reform-oriented legislative package.

With the MPs’ acceptance of senators’ amendments, the law will constitutionally be sent to His Majesty King Abdullah for ratification and then will be published in the Official Gazette if endorsed.

The Senate made the amendment to Article 66 of the bill to resolve any expected case of vacancies in the current seats of the Lower House's after the draft law is put into force by keeping the provisions under which the current House was elected valid until the end of its mandate, for whatever reason.

After the suggested amendment, Article 66 stipulates that “the Elections Law for the Lower House No.25 for 2012 will be cancelled but its provisions will still be valid until they are replaced with the provisions of the new law, and will remain in force until the mandate of the current House expires for whatever reason”.

Under this amendment, all procedures and regulations under which the current Lower House was elected will remain valid even after the cancellation of the 2012 elections law with the publication of the new law. 

On February 21, the Lower House passed the 2015 parliamentary elections bill with minor changes following six marathon sessions.

The notorious one-person, one-vote electoral system, which was introduced in 1993, is now history, under the version of the law adopted by both Houses. The bill is based on an at-large voting system, in which candidates can run for parliamentary elections on one large multi-member ticket.

The number of Lower House members was reduced to 130 from 150 under the 2015 elections bill, which is based on the open proportional list at the level of the governorate/constituency.

Under Article 9 of the 68-article law, eligible voters will have a number of votes equal to the number of seats allocated for their district in the Lower House. 

During the elections, each eligible voter has to vote for a multi-member list as a whole and for individual candidate of their choice from the same ticket.

Under the 2012 law, on the basis of which the 2013 parliamentary elections were held, each voter was given two votes: one for a candidate at the district level and another for a closed proportional list that competed for 27 seats at the national level.

The House endorsed a provision dividing the Kingdom into 23 electoral districts, one for each of the 12 governorates, except for Amman, which was split into five districts, Irbid into four and Zarqa into two, while each of the three Badia districts (northern, central and southern) was considered a governorate for the purposes of the bill at hand.

The draft law allocates 115 seats for the constituencies and 15 seats for a women’s quota: one seat for each governorate and one seat for each Badia district.

With the endorsement of the bill, all political reform-oriented laws are now completed, after three key pieces of legislation have been passed, namely the Political Parties Law, Decentralisation Law and Municipalities Law. 

AMMAN — The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has reinstated the full value of the electronic food vouchers it uses to provide vital support to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Syrians in Jordan, starting the coming month.

The move was made possible after Germany pledged at least $65 million to Jordan out of the total pledge made during the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference” in London earlier this year. 

“Together with the support of other donors,” the organisation said in a statement, “this will allow WFP to continue providing vital food assistance to some 530,000 Syrian refugees in the country with full value assistance from March until the end of the year”. 

Since the onset of the Syrian refugees influx to Jordan in 2012, WFP’s support through its e-card system has injected over $460 million into the local Jordanian economy and created hundreds of local jobs in the food retail sector. However, the agency has made cuts in the programme on several occasions and warned of total cancellation if donations stopped.

AMMAN — Jordan Media Commission Director General Amjad Qadi on Sunday circulated a gag order to all media outlets, banning all forms of publication regarding Tuesday’s raid on a terrorist cell in Irbid, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

The gag order, which includes social media, was initiated by the State Security Court's prosecutor general’s office earlier in the day. 

The ban is meant to “protect the secrecy of the investigation,” Qadi said, stressing that only news authorised by the prosecution is allowed to be published. 

During the raid, Major Rashed Zyoud was killed and five other security officers  from a special anti-terror unit were  injured, in addition to two civilians who happened to be in the area.

The security forces killed seven terrorists, while 13 others had been apprehended for involvement in a terrorist plot.

AMMAN — The Water Ministry on Sunday urged the public to report violations on the water network, underscoring that the retrieved stolen water over the past three years constitutes 60 per cent of the capital’s annual water allocation.

“Since the launch of a national campaign to end violations on water resources and networks, a total of 110 million cubic metres [mcm] of water were retrieved by sealing and stopping the digging of illegal wells, as well as removing illegal fixtures on water mains,” the ministry’s spokesperson, Omar Salameh, said.

Salameh said the annual water budget for the capital, which is home to 4 million people, stands at 185mcm.

Since — according to official figures — the annual per capita share in Jordan is 123 cubic metres, the 110mcm of retrieved stolen water meets the annual demands of over 800,000 people.

In Amman, the Jordan Water Company (Miyahuna) supplies 630,000 subscribers with water and wastewater services, according to the company’s figures, which also indicate that current water loss in the capital stands at around 37 per cent.

“We ask that people cooperate with us and support our ongoing efforts to stop violations on the water network and resources. So many cases were discovered and several violators were referred for legal action because people informed us of the violations,” Salameh told The Jordan Times.

In February, the authorities sealed 13 illegal wells and removed 661 violations on water resources and 177 violations targeting King Abdullah Canal, according to a Water Ministry report reviewed by the Cabinet on Sunday.

Since the launch of the campaign in 2013, the ministry has dismantled 21,698 illegal fixtures on water mains and resources, sealed 735 illegal wells and seized and confiscated 40 drilling rigs, according to official figures carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

The ministry banned the drilling of wells in 1997 to limit random pumping of water and preserve aquifers from depletion and salinity. Its estimates indicate that there are 1,100-1,200 illegal wells across the country.

Under the Water Authority of Jordan Law, those who abuse water carriers and mains, wastewater, pumping, purification or desalination stations; cause the pollution of water resources, pipes or stations used for drinking water; or dig or are involved in the digging of wells without obtaining a licence, face a prison sentence of up to five years and fines up to JD7,000.

In addition, violators of water and wastewater projects are jailed for up to three years and fined up to JD5,000, according to the law.

All penalties stipulated under the law are doubled in the case of repeat offences.

AMMAN — The Lower House on Sunday referred the draft civil retirement law to its Legal Committee for review.

In September 2014, His Majesty King Abdullah rejected the draft law after it was endorsed by the two Houses of Parliament and was supposed to grant MPs and Senators lifetime pension benefits.

The lawmakers’ move at the time was met with wide public outrage.

Under the law, MPs and senators granted themselves lifetime pensions equal to those of ministers, setting seven years of service in Parliament or civil service as an eligibility condition. In addition, the bill grants all lawmakers who were members of Parliament on May 20, 2010 and henceforth the same benefits. 

During Sunday’s session, some MPs criticised the referral of the law to the Legal Committee, insisting that the whole bill should be rejected.

Others criticised the government for not withdrawing the draft law from the House and coming up with new one that addresses the flaws in the old version that the King rejected.

Blaming the government for the whole fuss over the law, MP Mahmoud Kharabsheh (Balqa, 1st District) said the law aimed primarily at decreasing ministers’ salaries and not increasing lawmakers’ pensions, as most people think.

Urging his colleagues to reject the bill, Deputy Saad Hayel Srour (Northern Badia) said the law has a wider goal tackling the issue of civil retirement for all segments of society and not only MPs. 

MP Khalil Atiyeh (Amman, 1st District) supported the referral of the law to the committee so that it can remove the constitutional flaw, saying that the cost of lawmakers’ annual salaries is JD2 million and not JD50 million nor JD8 million, as “it was exaggerated”.

For MP Wafaa Bani Mustafa (Jerash, 1st District), the law should have been rejected, citing its unconstitutionality. 

The law was sent to the Constitutional Court for an opinion in 2013. In its reply, the court said members of Parliament are not entitled to pensions. 

In addition, it said that a law with a financial impact must not entail retroactive measures to change aspects that came into effect under previous laws and bring about an increase in expenditure.

AMMAN — The Council of Ministers on Sunday approved exempting renewable energy projects for electricity generation from infrastructure fees, limiting them to the buildings allocated for the projects, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The decision aims at reducing the energy bill by adopting alternative energy resources.

AMMAN — Private hospitals in Jordan want to attract patients from new markets this year to avoid a gloomy outlook. 

Private Hospitals Association (PHA) President Fawzi Hammouri told The Jordan Times on Sunday that the medical tourism industry saw a 15 per cent drop in revenues and in the number of patients from regional and international countries in 2015 due to visa restrictions on some nationalities, such as Yemenis and Libyans. 

Hammouri said the visa restrictions imposed by the government late last year affected the number of people seeking medication in the Kingdom’s private healthcare facilities. 

In 2014, over 250,000 patients were treated in private hospitals in Jordan, he noting, adding that the traditional markets for the hospitals were Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Iraq. 

“These were the most lucrative markets for us,” the PHA president said, pointing out that a strategy to promote the sector in new markets is currently being prepared. 

The campaign will target Saudi Arabia, Oman, Algeria, Chad, Nigeria and Kazakhstan, Hammouri noted, and it includes TV commercials, advertisements in print media, social media, exhibitions and inviting health officials in these countries to visit Jordanian healthcare facilities within familiarisation tours, in addition to inviting journalists in these countries to write about the industry. 

“The reason why we want to launch the promotion campaign is because we are afraid that 2016 could be worse than last year if visa restrictions continue,” he added, indicating that nationals of the countries targeted in the new strategy that need visas to enter the Kingdom are from Algeria, Chad and Nigeria. 

The strategy seeks to offset the drop that private hospitals recorded in 2015, Hammouri said, stressing that medical tourism represents around 40 per cent of the revenues of hospitals. 

In 2014, private hospitals in Jordan recorded around JD1 billion in revenues, while last year, revenues stood at JD850 million. 

Hammouri said the association will be working with the government and other private sector stakeholders such as hotels, airlines, shopping centres and tourism resorts to participate in the budget for the campaign, whose cost, he said, is still undecided. 

In terms of the local market, Hammouri said around 240,000 Jordanian patients seek treatment at private hospitals annually. 

He said if the campaign succeeds in attracting patients from the targeted markets, it could create 1,500 new jobs and could also attract new investments in the medical sector.

There are 61 private hospitals in the Kingdom with around 4,600 beds, and they employ 50 per cent of workers in the health sector, according to PHA figures. 

AMMAN — Joint patrols from the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) and the Rangers have apprehended three Arab nationals in possession of three falcons, the RSCN announced Sunday.

Rihab Police Station in Mafraq monitored the hunters, and inspection teams examined the falcons, which turned out to belong to the shaheen internationally endangered species, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. The joint patrol also confiscated 131 rifle bullets, some birds used to train the eagles and a tracking device for falcons.