Reports | 25 05 2020
Houses in the city of Damascus have turned into ovens in the afternoons and evenings, in light of the crisis of power outages, and the very high temperature, which surpassed 35 degrees Celsius in some cases, although the actual summer months didn’t come yet.
Intense heat and other pressures
With the advent of the high temperature, fans prices rates rose in the capital, to reach insane levels, and its price has become a real burden on the poor and middle households.
'Abdul Hadi said: "We expected that the rise in rationing hours will lead to lower prices of fans, but as the popular saying goes " Titi Titi " which means (we came back as we went, didn’t get any benefit), and the difficulty in obtaining a fan, that its price exceeds my Monthly income which does not exceed 29 thousand Syrian pounds, because there are no enough fans in the market".
The dollar is the reason
A Salesmen in Damascus confirms that the electrical market in Marjah experiencing a recession except for fans of all kinds, because of the intensity of the heat and being forced to buy fans, after the idea of getting an air conditioner has become impossible.
According to consumers, the prices and the fans got to double comparing to what it was in 2015, as the citizen's salary for a month is not nearly enough to buy an ordinary fan.
Hussam, a merchant in the electricity market in Damascus, explains: the local fans prices rose significantly after becoming difficult to import a fan.
He imports fans from outside Syria, saying: "The goods containers in the port of Latakia have been seized since six months, what led to a lack of foreign fans in the market, especially the Chinese fans that operate on the battery, after it spread dramatically last year, causing an additional increase in the prices due to the low supply of that quality. "
As usual, all traders hide as soon as the question of high prices behind the rise of the dollar, and start counting the list of complaints in front of the citizen. "ROZANA" spotted a number of acquisitions of fans in Damascus markets, the talk between the merchant and the buyer mostly revolved around the imported inputs and the difficulty of importing high and costs down, in addition to higher wages and lack of labor and high freight rates.
And what about profits? Traders answer that it has become at the minimum limits as a result of higher product prices, the price precedes the citizen’s income. and putting a high profit will increase the goods’ recession and sales would drop dramatically.
Back to “Thieves” markets
After it disappeared for a while, the thieves market returned to impose itself as a last resort to those who refused to go to it later, because they know that everything in there is stolen items, used to be owned by people whose houses were destroyed and they were displaced abroad.
Obyda, from Damascus, said: "Fans price precede the citizen’s income, the price of the local fan-made, floor or ceiling fans, " Starmix "or" Ramco " are up to 25 thousand pounds, while its price last summer was 10 thousand pounds".
He adds, that the price of the big square fan reaches 28 thousand pounds, and the price of the fan "Star way", estimated at 32 thousand pounds.
Mahmoud Jbasina, from Damascus, found himselfe forced to buy a fan from the “Thieves Market”, because of the high prices, “either through some repair shops power tools, or through the stalls" he asserts.
Social media still the most prominent market for stolen materials, and even used fans affected by prices of new ones, where usually the price of the used fan is half of the new one price depending on the age and cleanliness of the fan.
Popular effective solutions
Parks is the only outlet for the large number of residents of the capital damascus, especially the displaced from other parts of Syria, where most of them live I shared houses with other families, and the number of the people living in one house is beyond the reasonable limit, what force them to escape that "choked" apartments to the gardens.
Syrians send their children to sit in the cold streets in front of homes, and at the entrances of buildings, in preparation for Summer, and others purchased the fans that run on batteries in an attempt to get a suitable shelter from the summer heat During the power outage.
Ms. Amani lives in Damascus, confirms that she had to invent a way to deceive her three children Sami, Moaz and Mustafa, in the face of rising temperature and the enthusiasm of children to buy ice cream.
Amani confirm that the lowest price per piece of ice cream reaches 50 Syrian pounds, so she puts cups of water with the addition of a little sugar and flavorings in the refrigerator to feed her kids her (ice cream) the next day.
And Abu Qasem, bus driver in Damascus, was shocked one day, after losing his "towel", what forced him to buy a new one, to protect him from the heat.
The driver and his colleagues, invented "conditioners towels" handmade, as an optimal solution, as he put it, where they wet their towels with water and put them on their heads or necks, in light of their inability to have air conditioners in their buses, because the buses are old and the conditioners cost a lot, as it requires more fuel oil, and that could decrease the drivers’ profits.