Local

AMMAN — Teenagers across the Kingdom will have the chance to try their hand at art thanks to a project implemented by the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts that was launched on Monday. 

Financially supported by the USAID Economic Growth Through Sustainable Tourism Project, the initiative will add activities to the national gallery’s mobile museum to highlight career opportunities in tourism.

With the aim of raising the younger generation’s awareness of tourism through art, the project seeks to show beneficiaries how the sector benefits the local economy, Ibrahim Osta, chief of party of the USAID Economic Growth Through Sustainable Tourism Project, said at the grant signing ceremony. 

“A number of artists will give art lessons to children in several areas of the Kingdom. They will also teach them to produce artworks inspired by tourism in Jordan,” Osta told The Jordan Times.

At the end of each session, the seven best works will be selected for a national art competition, according to USAID.

Jordanians aged between 15 and 16 can benefit from the project, which will be conducted once a week and conclude in June. Organisers aim to reach at least 1,000 young Jordanians from various backgrounds in 12 governorates within five months. 

HRH Princess Wijdan Al Hashemi, president of the Royal Society of Fine Arts, said the national gallery’s mobile museum, which began operating in 2009, is a “pioneering project” not only for Jordan, but also for the whole region.

“Personally I do not know another country that has a similar project which takes art to adults and children who live outside the capital in villages, whose inhabitants might find it difficult to come to Amman and visit an art museum,” she told reporters. 

Princess Wijdan noted that the project is more about education than tourism awareness. 

“It is about introducing Jordanian artists to people outside Amman. Usually, everything is concentrated in the capital in the Arab world and most developing countries,” the princess added.

To date, more than 207 visits have been carried out to various areas in Jordan under the mobile museum project, with 30 local artists conducting art workshops, according to a USAID statement.

AMMAN — Alice 3, a version of a software tool that introduces young students to computer programming, is now available in Arabic following a translation project involving students from universities across Jordan, according to a statement from Oracle issued on Monday.

The translation project, which took four months to complete, was managed by the Oracle Academy and Carnegie Mellon University.

Students who took part in the project were honoured at the launch event in Amman on Monday.

“Alice is a free platform from Carnegie Mellon University designed to teach students object-oriented programming by engaging them in a fun activity — making animated movies and games,” the statement said.

AMMAN — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff Gen. Mashal Al Zaben and Dutch Ambassador to Jordan Paul van den IJssel on Monday discussed Jordan’s relations with the Netherlands and opportunities for further cooperation.

In a separate meeting on Monday, Zaben discussed bilateral ties and other issues of mutual concern with Iraqi Ambassador to Jordan Jawad Hadi Abbas.

AMMAN — A total of 3,736 out of 3,742 General Secondary Certificate Examination students who applied to the Kingdom’s 10 public universities have been accepted, Unified Admissions Committee Director Ghaleb Hourani said on Monday.

The students’ names were scheduled to be posted on the committee’s website by Monday evening.

AMMAN — Border guards foiled an attempt to smuggle a large amount of ammunition and other material from Syria into Jordan on Sunday night, a source at the Jordan Armed Forces said Monday.

The source added that the guards arrested five suspects and seized their car, noting that 755 Syrian refugees crossed into Jordan at midnight.

AMMAN — Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour on Monday met with Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Joëlle Milquet and an accompanying delegation to discuss bilateral ties and the latest regional developments, especially the Syrian crisis and its political, economic and security consequences on the region.

During the meeting, attended by Interior Minister Hussein Majali, Ensour expressed Jordan’s keenness on enhancing its relations with Belgium both bilaterally and through the EU.

He added that finding a just solution to the Palestinian issue is the key to resolving all regional problems.

In a separate meeting with Milquet and the accompanying delegation, Majali briefed them on the economic and security challenges Jordan is facing as a result of the Syrian refugee influx, calling on the international community to assist the Kingdom in its humanitarian efforts.

AMMAN — HRH Prince Feisal on Monday was sworn in as Regent during His Majesty King Abdullah’s absence, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

King Abdullah headed to Singapore and Indonesia on Sunday evening.

During the visit, he is scheduled to hold talks with senior officials from both countries that focus on economic ties and regional developments.

 The visit aims at boosting coordination with the two Asian countries and building joint stands towards regional and international issues, particularly as Jordan has won a UN Security Council seat representing Arab Asia and the Far East, according to a Royal Court statement issued earlier this week.

AMMAN — Some MPs on Monday criticised the government for “doing nothing” to deal with the “failure” of the Decent Housing for Decent Living initiative, blaming the Public Works Ministry for most of the shortcomings in the planning and implementation phases.

At a meeting to discus the Audit Bureau’s report on the performance of the ministry, the Lower House Finance Committee agreed that the ministry did not select proper locations for the housing units built under this initiative.

The Ministry of Public Works and Housing selected sites with almost no public services or facilities nearby; therefore, it could not sell them, said Deputy Rudaina Ati (Zarqa), a member of the committee.

In cases when the housing units were built near services, there was no obstacle to the marketing process, she noted.

Public Works Minister Sami Halaseh told panel members that the ministry is still facing difficulties in marketing these units, as it has sold only 37 per cent of the apartments so far.

Launched by His Majesty King Abdullah in February 2008, the initiative was supposed to see the construction of more than 120,000 “affordable” housing units for Jordanians with low and limited income, but the plan stalled amid allegations of corruption and banks’ lending restrictions.

The Audit Bureau report showed that the ministry managed to sell only 3,049 out of 8,448 flats for JD7.8 million, and reduced the price by 15 per cent, losing JD32 million and making the total price for the remaining units JD196 million.

However, in an attempt to promote the project, the Cabinet recently approved a recommendation to encourage Jordanians to buy apartments under the initiative.

Based on the recommendations of a study conducted in cooperation with the private sector, the government will support buyers with the necessary funds to ensure that the instalments they have to pay to the bank remain affordable and do not include additional costs.

Last month, Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour urged the Education Ministry to coordinate with the Housing and Urban Development Corporation to give priority to teachers to benefit from the initiative.

Ensour also directed the Central Bank of Jordan to ensure that the payment procedures are streamlined, calling on the concerned ministers to ensure that health, education and transport services are provided near the apartments.

AMMAN — Jordan is looking for and considering various solutions to deal with its energy problem, and a main breakthrough is expected in 2017 with the utilisation of oil shale reserves, Senator Alaa Batayneh said on Monday. 

Delivering a lecture on the energy situation at the University of Jordan (UJ), Batayneh explained that the option was not tapped much earlier because generating energy from this source would have been expensive compared with the cost of other sources that were readily available. 

Prior to 2009, Jordan relied heavily on Egyptian natural gas, which cost only a quarter of the price of other equivalents that could have been used to generate the same amount of electricity, he said, adding that previously, the country was received fuel from Iraq at a preferential rate as well as from Gulf countries.   

At the end of November 2013, a joint Estonian-Malaysian consortium entered final negotiations to construct the Kingdom’s first oil shale power plant in a bid to utilise oil shale reserves. 

Jordan is one of the five richest countries in terms of oil shale reserves, with over 40 billion tonnes spread under around 60 per cent of the country’s surface. 

Batayneh, a former minister of energy, also underscored agreements recently signed to utilise renewable energy. 

He highlighted the importance of steps taken to facilitate the import of liquefied gas which should materialise by the end of this year.  

At present, Jordan imports 97 per cent of its energy requirements, while it only produces 3 per cent of its needs through the Risheh gas power station in the eastern region.

“This is where the main challenge lies,” Batayneh told professors, undergraduate and graduate students at the UJ business faculty.

“The next few years are going to be tough, but the future looks promising,” he noted. 

The national energy strategy is based on diversifying energy resources and increasing the country’s reliance on its own resources, the senator said, emphasising the importance of the strategy to ensure the sector’s stability.  

By 2020, imported fuel should be down to 40 per cent of the energy mix, while 6 per cent should come from nuclear power, 10 per cent from renewable energy, 1 per cent from imported electricity, 14 per cent from oil shale and 29 per cent from imported natural gas, according to Batayneh. 

Another major challenge is the high and growing rate of electricity consumption in Jordan compared with that of other countries, he noted.

The lecture is part of a series of business debates initiated in September 2013 by Professor Zu’bi Al Zu’bi, dean of the UJ faculty of business with the purpose of encouraging constructive dialogue and transparency between decision makers from the public and private sectors, and UJ students to address issues of interest for both academia and practice. 

AMMAN — Although Jordan ranks as the eighth largest olive oil producing country in the world, it still lacks proper facilities for the treatment of zibar, an oily waste generated during the olive oil extraction process, according to a study.

Jordan has more than 15 million olive trees that produce over 130,000 tonnes of olives, 85 per cent of which farmers send to the 128 olive presses spread across the country, the study indicated.

Seventy per cent of the mills are located in the northern region, 22 per cent in the central region and 8 per cent in the south.

The majority of olive presses and tankers that transport zibar illegally dispose of it in wadis, sewers or at the sewage dumpsite in the capital’s Ain Ghazal Wastewater Treatment Plant, the Olive Mills Wastewater (zibar) Study revealed.

The Environment Ministry has designated three dumpsites for the disposal of zibar: Ikeider in the north, Al Humra in the central region and Allajun in the south.

“None of these dumpsites have lined evaporation ponds and subsequently are not equipped with proper mitigation measures to prevent the environmental impacts of zibar disposal,” said the study, which was prepared by the USAID-funded Jordan Institutional Support and Strengthening Programme.

In 2012, the country’s olive mills produced 212,418 cubic metres of zibar, which resulted from the processing of 115,282 tonnes of olives, according to the study, which indicated that almost a third of the zibar was generated in Irbid Governorate, 80km north of Amman.

Zibar is black or reddish black, with a strong offensive smell, a high percentage of fat, oil and grease as well as a high organic load, which is 400 times higher than that of domestic wastewater.

If it spreads on soil or is dumped in wadis, zibar can cause serious environmental problems and reduce soil fertility as it contains many chemicals, the study warned.

The authors of the study presented several recommendations to manage the disposal of zibar, including the establishment of an olive oil wastewater treatment plant and evaporation ponds to serve all the presses across the country.

“The evaporation ponds can be established as part of an already existing dumpsite or a wastewater treatment plant, depending on the geographical location, technical suitability, land suitability and available land,” the study proposed.

Olive mills operate during the harvest season which extends over a 75-day period between mid-October and mid-January, according to the study.

It also indicated that the month of December witnesses the maximum zibar generation due to the rise in olive oil production.