{"id":47148,"date":"2021-12-13T06:24:25","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T06:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=47148"},"modified":"2021-12-13T06:24:25","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T06:24:25","slug":"oman-to-administer-booster-covid-19-vaccines-to-18-plus-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=47148","title":{"rendered":"Oman to administer booster COVID-19 vaccines to 18-plus population"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nAL-BAB:\u00a0Mohammed Al-Debek, a schoolteacher in northern Syria, is on strike: The currency devaluation in neighboring Turkey has slashed the value of his salary by two-thirds.<\/p>\n

\nHis town of Al-Bab lies in a northern area of war-torn Syria that in recent years has turned into a de facto Turkish protectorate.<\/p>\n

\nBecause the Turkish lira is now the main currency in the area, its recent nose-dive has heaped further pain on the people living there.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cMy salary in 2017 was worth $160, but today it is worth $50, a fraction of its value,\u201d the 33-year-old said outside the washed-out yellow walls of his school.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cIt\u2019s barely enough to pay the rent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAnkara does not only have military control of the border region, but most of the products available on the markets and even the mobile phone operator are also Turkish.<\/p>\n

\nAreas of northern Syria run by Turkish-backed opposition groups switched to the lira as the main currency last year, replacing the massively devalued Syrian pound.<\/p>\n

\nThe lira has lost 45 percent of its value against the dollar this year alone and Debek\u2019s purchasing power has plummeted, as has everybody else\u2019s in the region.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cAfter the collapse of the lira, I was forced to look for a second job after school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nHis new afternoon job in a bookshop earns him another $40 but that still leaves him short of the $200 he says he needs to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

\nTurkey directly administers several districts of northern Syria and, to seal its presence in the area, has invested heavily in education, health and other sectors.<\/p>\n

\nThe region\u2019s economic fate is inextricably tied to Turkey\u2019s and the lira\u2019s sharp fall in recent weeks piled more misery on an enclave whose inhabitants are already scarred by war.<\/p>\n

\nA recent UN report on the humanitarian situation cited estimates that \u201c97 percent of the population, even those that are in employment, are living in extreme poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nInflation is soaring just as fast as it is in neighboring Turkey, with basic food items such as bread selling at record prices and purchasing power at its lowest ever.<\/p>\n

\nAnd when the price of a bag of flatbread stops rising, locals say, the amount of bread inside goes down.<\/p>\n

\nAhmed Abu Obeida, an official with the region\u2019s chamber of commerce who also owns a company importing food products from Turkey, acknowledged that consumption had slumped.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe demand for basic materials has decreased, and the citizens in general cannot afford basic things such as their daily needs in food, medicine and heating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\nHanaa Al-Yasbu, a 36-year-old woman who was widowed in an air strike five years ago and has since been living in a camp for war-displaced people, is one of them.<\/p>\n

\nShe usually earns around 20 Turkish lira a day by harvesting wheat and potatoes, enough to keep her five children warm and fed.<\/p>\n

\nWith her daily income now worth just a dollar and a half, Hanaa has to venture into the countryside to find firewood.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI dream that I have about 50 lira a day to buy food for my children to feed them, so they do not sleep hungry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AL-BAB:\u00a0Mohammed Al-Debek, a schoolteacher in northern Syria, is on strike: The currency devaluation in neighboring Turkey has slashed the value of his salary by two-thirds. His town of Al-Bab lies in a northern area of war-torn Syria that in recent years has turned into a de facto Turkish protectorate. Because the Turkish lira is now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}