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AMMAN — The Council of Ministers on Sunday approved a plan to rehabilitate Wadi Zarqa, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

The project, with an investment value amounting to JD75 million, will contribute to developing the Zarqa River area, which begins in Ain Ghazal in Amman, passes through Ruseifa, Zarqa, Hashemiyeh and Jerash, to finally reach King Talal Dam. 

The project, which covers a 107-square-kilometres area, aims at resolving environment problems in Wadi Zarqa by implementing a comprehensive development strategy to preserve natural environment, and increase interest in agricultural projects in and around it. 

The Cabinet tasked Water Minister Hazem Nasser and Public Works Minister Sami Halaseh with forming a committee, headed by the Public Works Ministry, to review the tenders. 

The committee will be formed for the purpose of direct purchases and negotiating for final prices as well as adopting agreements to be signed. 

Nasser said the Cabinet recently tasked his ministry with preparing a comprehensive blueprint for the rehabilitation of the Zarqa River to make it a location for people to visit instead of being an environmental burden. 

Petra quoted him as saying that the Council of Ministers on Sunday decided to approve the study presented by his ministry and the Public Works Ministry to rehabilitate Wadi Zarqa over a five-year period, with the government spending JD15 million each year. 

The second largest tributary of the lower Jordan River after the Yarmouk River, the Zarqa River’s watershed encompasses the most densely populated areas in the country, including Zarqa Governorate, which is home to 52 per cent of Jordan’s industries and has a population of around 1.4 million.

AMMAN — Royal Jordanian (RJ) said on Sunday it will inaugurate a new regular route from Amman to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, as of March 21, with three weekly flights.

Guangzhou will be RJ’s second Chinese destination and the fifth in the Far East, a statement from the airline said. 

The others are: Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.

“Operating flights to Guangzhou, China’s third largest city and the largest in the south-central region of the country, is bound to serve the active trade and commerce traffic between Jordan and China,” RJ said in the statement.

In 2014, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport was China’s second busiest and the world’s 16th busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic; it handled over 55 million passengers that year.

RJ President/CEO Captain Suleiman Obeidat said adding Guangzhou to the route network is in line with the strategy that RJ is now implementing; one of the pillars of this strategy is to review the route network and open new, profitable markets, according to the statement.

Obeidat added that Guangzhou, the 56th destination on the RJ network, will be “an added value to the network”, meeting the demand of traders and businessmen from the two countries, as well as merchants from neighbouring countries.

The statement quoted him as saying that Guangzhou has a great potential for the tourism market, enabling both Chinese and Jordanian tourists to visit. 

RJ said it will run flights to Guangzhou via Bangkok on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, using its wide-body Boeing 787 or Airbus 330 aircraft. 

RJ customers may book their flights at any of the company’s sales offices or agents in Jordan, China and worldwide, through the airline’s booking engine at www.rj.com, through the RJ smartphone application or by contacting the RJ call centre at 0096265100000, the statement said.

The RJ network saw the addition of four cities in the past eight months: Najaf, Tabuk, Ankara and Jakarta. It shut down others for both economic and security reasons, according to the statement.

AMMAN — Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour on Sunday pledged to investigate an alleged assault incident against two female deputies in front of Parliament.

“We will not accept any attack against any deputy regardless of the reason,” Ensour told MPs a few minutes after hearing Deputy Rula Hroub complain under the Dome about the alleged attack.

“Whoever has a complaint can file one and we will seriously look into it. This is an issue that we will not ignore,” the premier said, adding that he is speaking on behalf of himself and the interior minister.

MPs Rula Hroub (Stronger Jordan list) and Hind Fayez (Central Badia) were taking part in a peaceful demonstration outside Parliament with members of six political parties who were protesting against the draft elections law when the alleged assault occurred.

The political parties were protesting against scrapping the national list from the bill and were also demanding a seat for women in each constituency, according to Fayez.

Fayez told The Jordan Times outside Parliament in Abdali that gendarmerie forces dispersed the protesters and that both she and Hroub “were attacked in the process”.

“I may consider resigning if proper measures are not taken by the government,” the lawmaker said.

Hroub urged Interior Minister Salameh Hammad, who attended the Lower House session, to launch an investigation into the incident.

“The attack against us is an attack against the legitimacy of the Lower House,” she said.

Likewise, Fayez also expressed her anger over the alleged assault, urging the interior minister to resign.

“I was being pushed and assaulted by the police although I told them I was a deputy. One officer said ‘a deputy or not, it does not matter’ as he shoved me,” she charged.

Fayez told her fellow deputies that the “attack against her was an attack on all MPs’ dignity”.

Hroub, who sat in the Lower House’s gallery briefly in solidarity with a coalition that gathered to demand a seat for women in each of the constituencies, told The Jordan Times that “the attack resembles the government’s refusal to accept any peaceful demonstrations against the new draft bill.”

“This is an indicator that the government has no intention of allowing this law to pass in Parliament because it prevented a peaceful demonstration,” she charged.

Public Security Department Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi was unavailable all evening to comment on the incident.

AMMAN — Activists wearing red chequered scarves with stickers reading one seat for women in each constituency occupied part of Parliament’s gallery on Sunday to reiterate their demands.

Around 150 individuals, mostly women, came from various parts of the Kingdom to demand better representation for women in the Lower House of Parliament.

The men and women, part of a national coalition that is demanding a seat for women in each constituency, sat in the gallery and watched the debate that was taking place among deputies on the draft elections law.

Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW) Secretary General Salma Nims said the coalition members will come every time there is a session.

“We want to emphasise our demands that were ignored by the government in hopes that they might be considered during the deliberation,” Nims told The Jordan Times.

Activist Fatmeh Ensour, part of the coalition, said she wants to be present to support these demands.

“We want to see more women in the Lower House. Jordanian women have proved themselves in all fields, including the Lower House, and that is why we want to see more women representing us,” Ensour told The Jordan Times.

The decision to escalate the coalition’s protest was made after the Lower House Legal Committee last week endorsed the 2015 draft elections law without taking into consideration the women movement’s demands.

The coalition was demanding that the bill stipulate having one woman elected for each of the 23 constituencies stipulated in the draft law.

This would mean increasing the current 15-seat quota for women to 23. 

Currently, there are 18 women in Parliament, 15 from the quota and 3 who won in direct elections.

Under the 2015 elections bill, the number of Lower House members has been reduced from 150 to 130, based on the open proportional list at the district level.

Lower House Speaker Atef Tarawneh welcomed the presence of the coalition at the opening session.  

Several MPs joined the coalition briefly to express their support for the women’s movement, pledging to fight for their demands under the Dome.

They included, according to a JNCW statement, MPs Rula Hroub, Wafa Bani Mustafa, Shaha Abu Shosheh, Falak Jamani, Najah Azzeh, Tamam Riyati, Samir Oweis, Fawaz Zu’bi, Abdullah Khalidi and Adnan Ajarmeh.

Women leaders told The Jordan Times in previous remarks that both the government and the Lower House Legal Committee have turned their backs on the women movement’s demands.

AMMAN — The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) has decided to include new districts under its management in order to serve the growing number of residents in the capital, a GAM official said on Sunday. 

GAM spokesperson, Izzedin Shammout, said there are many empty spaces located in parts of the capital that fall under GAM's oversight. 

"There are already 4 million people residing in the capital and this is the number we had expected to reach by 2025, so instead of constructing additional floors in new housing buildings, we can expand the space horizontally," he told The Jordan Times over the phone.

The municipal official said good quality services will be provided to these new areas. 

"The new areas will function as residential and commercial districts," he added. 

Shammout said this step will help ease the pressure on housing in the centre of the capital and encourage people, including investors, to consider new areas.

The first new district to be added to Amman, called Um Al Aqareb, is a 1,000 dunum area located to the north of Tariq District.

Amman currently consists of 22 districts, according to Shammout. 

AMMAN — A committee representing more than 25,000 property owners in the capital's Jubeiha area, who are affected by a court ruling that revoked their ownership, is planning a sit-in to demand that the authorities safeguard their rights.

The committee voiced anger over inaction by officials on this issue and said owners were planning to escalate their protests, according to one of the property owners, who preferred to remain anonymous.

"We held several meetings over the past few weeks and decided that a sit-in will be held soon to draw the government's attention to the issue," the owner told The Jordan Times over the phone on Sunday.

"We want a solution. It does not make sense that after years of buying our houses legally we lose them in a blink of an eye," said the owner, who bought an apartment in the early 1990s in the area.

Citing a statement by the committee, the owner said many of those negatively affected by the issue were panicking because of the possibility of losing their properties, which they bought legally and via the concerned authorities.

In December last year, owners of around 25 properties in Jubeiha area, writing on behalf of more than 25,000 fellow owners of land and houses, published an appeal in Al Rai daily to urge Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour to intervene after a court ruling was issued the previous month.

The court ruling stated that the ownership of more than 226 dunums of land, where around 25,000 properties have been built, would revert to the original owners, who recently won a lawsuit after claiming that their lands were sold using forged documents.

AMMAN — The State Security Court (SSC) on Sunday handed one man the death penalty and sentenced two others to prison terms ranging from life to 15 years after convicting them of shooting and killing two police officers in Irbid last December.

The SSC, presided over by Col. Raed Ezmigna, handed the main defendant in the case the death penalty for carrying on the assault on a Public Security Department (PSD) patrol, during which Captain Jamal Darawsheh and Corporal Usama Jarawreh were killed, a senior judicial source said.

The second defendant in the case was handed life in prison for orchestrating the attack and for transporting the weapon used in the incident, while the third defendant received 15 years in prison for providing the weapon while knowing it was going to be used against police officers, the judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The three defendants were charged with carrying out terrorist acts by using automatic rifles that led to the killing of one person, and carrying out terrorist acts using automatic rifles that caused damage to a vehicle, according to the charge sheet. 

Darawsheh and Jarawreh were in their patrol vehicle near the Samma intersection to the west of Irbid, some 80km north of Amman, when the suspects reportedly fired at their vehicle.

Jarawreh, who was driving the vehicle, was injured and lost control of the car, which veered off and toppled down the road.

According to the SSC charge sheet, one of the defendants was the brother of a man from the village of Samma who was killed in a shootout with police in early October last year when police were trying to arrest him for alleged vandalism of an Islamic cemetery in the northern town.

The other two men were a friend and a cousin of the prime suspect, the charge sheet added.

AMMAN — The State Security Court (SSC) on Sunday sentenced two men to death after convicting them of murdering Second Lieutenant Nart Nafesh, 23, in Maan in August 2014.

The court also sentenced a third suspect to life in prison, declared a fourth innocent for lack of evidence and referred a minor to a juvenile court because he should not be tried as an adult at the SSC, a senior judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The SSC convictions against the defendants included conspiracy to commit terrorist acts that led to the death of an individual, possessing illegal automatic weapons and spreading terrorist ideologies.

The SSC charge sheet said four of the five defendants wanted to avenge the killing of one of their relatives during the unrest in Maan, some 220km south of Amman, and decided to target any police officer or gendarme in the city.  

On the day of the incident, the SSC charge sheet added, the group obtained three automatic rifles and "roamed the streets searching for police or army personnel to kill”.

The group saw an armoured truck parked guarding a point in the city and saw an officer descending from it, the charge sheet added.

Two of the suspects opened fire with their automatic weapons, striking Nafesh in the chest at 4:45am on August 4, 2014. 

The gendarme was rushed to Maan Public Hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.

Sunday’s verdicts will automatically be reviewed by the Court of Cassation within the next 30 days.

AMMAN — Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury on Sunday highlighted the government's measures to follow up on the implementation of the Jordan Compact.

The compact is the final statement issued by the Kingdom following the London donor conference earlier this month. 

It outlines Jordan’s “holistic approach” to the Syrian refugee crisis and lists pledges made by donors to the Kingdom.

During a meeting with Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Lilianne Ploumen, Fakhoury said the government has formed a ministerial committee to draw up an executive plan, prepare project proposals to submit to donors and highlight the priorities prepared by Jordan to find the proper donor and translate them into reality.

The government also formed a technical committee composed of the undersecretaries of the concerned ministries and institutions and the Jordan Investment Commission. 

The Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation will also create a unit — supported by the UK, the World Bank and the USAID — to follow up on the outcomes of the London conference and to ensure the sustainability of running and implementing the content of the Jordan Compact.

A ministry statement quoted Fakhoury as saying that the government is working on eight components to implement the Jordan Compact. 

These are creating a unit to follow up on implementation; negotiating with the EU to simplify rules of origin; reorganising the labour market; launching a new extended credit programme with the International Monetary Fund; developing the business environment to host investments; and implementing grants given to the new Jordan Response Plan (JRP) 2016-2018.

Moreover, the government is working on supporting the education sector in line with the JRP, and implementing obligations of concessionary funding and grants to finance the funding gap and the development projects according to the 2016-2018 budget and the executive development programme 2016-2018, the statement said.

Discussions with the Dutch minister, whose country is currently heading the European Union, also covered prospects of cooperation in development.

Fakhoury highlighted the importance of implementing the commitments that the international community pledged in the recently held London conference.

He thanked the Netherlands for its support for Jordan, especially during the donor conference.

Citing the preliminary outcomes of the latest population census, the minister said Jordan is hosting some 1.3 million Syrians. 

The refugee influx, coupled with regional unrest, has affected the rates of growth, investments, exports and tourism, posing a threat to the development gains that Jordan has achieved.

Fakhoury and Ploumen exchanged views on regional issues and the protracted challenges of the Syrian crisis.

The Dutch minister was briefed on the economic developments in Jordan and the most important priorities of the Jordan 2025 Vision. 

For her part, the Dutch minister stressed her country's deep-rooted ties with Jordan, which has a pivotal regional role, praising the Kingdom's reform drive.

Ploumen expressed her country's willingness to provide humanitarian support to Syrian refugees and their host communities.

She underlined the importance of economic cooperation in the fields of trade, investment, agriculture and tourism.

 The Netherlands, she said, supports Jordan's efforts to follow up on the implementation of the London conference's outcomes. 

AMMAN — A specialised medical team at the King Abdullah I University Hospital performed surgeries on 11 children for three consecutive days to resolve hearing problems as part of HRH Crown Prince Hussein's “Hearing without Borders” initiative, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Sunday.

The project, launched in 2014, aims at supporting children with hearing problems.