Most of the walls of Tartous are filled with photos of its young men killed in their early youth. Images of Assad’s officers are among those photos too.
Nowadays the talk of the day on the streets of Tartous, as well as on social networking, is about the corruption that continues to thrive in regime-controlled sectors. Just a few days ago sites and pages belonging to the Assad regime were filled with the news of finding a cache of expired drugs in Al-Basel Hospital which was named after the son of Hafez Al-Assad who died in early 1990s.
The hospital was built in 1995 and is an example of how Hafez and his family wanted to occupy everything and take ownership of every public place the people could use so they would remain always thankful to him and his family.
A Tartous media website mentioned that competent authorities (regime intelligence) were able to confiscate large quantities of expired and debased drugs after conducting a follow-up investigation at the warehouses of Al-Basel Hospital.
It added that “in order to complete the investigation and inventory the quantities of tainted pharmaceuticals, some of the workers in the laboratory and warehouse were arrested and that the relevant committees are still conducting investigations in coordination with the Health affairs."
Corruption is a well-known pillar of the Assad regime which is one of the main reasons for the uprising that triggered the revolution in 2011.
Anyone who follows some of the comments on social media that accompanied the news of this latest scandal would realize that the people of Tartous are well aware of the extent of this corruption, as are the rest of the Syrian people.
In reality, the pharmaceutical industry in Syria has been fraught with corruption and scandal for many years.
One of the hospital’s patients commented on this news by saying that nothing will change as a result of this investigation. "The hospital will remain the same and the poor and underprivileged people will be obliged to go to private hospitals.” He sarcastically added that the private hospitals were "where compassion, humanity and affection were found.”
One young man from Tartous said: “Everybody thinks that people living in the coastal region, which is the best among the provinces in Syria, are enjoying the blessings of the regime. But most of us are not counted on the lists of the regime’s favored few. Our purpose is only to serve the country and provide the martyrs that fill the streets and roads.”
A man who came from Aleppo to live in Tartous with his family told Orient Net: “My brother was fighting with Assad and was killed in 2015. The regime didn’t give us anything in return except a phone call from an officer to convey his condolences.”
He and his family are still struggling a lot in Tartous. His mother is a cardiac patient and after the big scandal in Al-Basel Hospital he believes that taking her medications is risky “I have to order her medications from Aleppo monthly,” he said.
At the same hospital warehouse one worker said: “All public sectors in the city are rife with corruption and laxity of morals.”
“May God help those who don’t have channels.”
Syrian pharmacist Sohaib Kalaaji, who used to own a pharmacy in Tartous before he was obliged to flee to Ankara, Turkey in 2015, told Orient Net; “The word corruption is not enough to describe what I saw in the health sector in Tartous. Everything there is controlled by Assad officers regarding narcotics and controlled medicines.”
“They are always finding ways to cover for their violations in hospitals.
“Dispensing errors go undetected. No routine checkups and no annual checkups. Health care in Syria is corrupted under Assad rule”.
Like many Syrian cities, Tartous has remained outside the development framework for decades and continues to be unable to generate or empower job opportunities for its residents. Area youth are forced to flee Tartous and look for jobs in other cities due to the lack of jobs in their own.
Assad, however, tries hard to deceive the world into thinking Tartous is a beautiful city with his tourism campaigns and repeated propaganda that what is happening in Syria is not a revolution against the corruption of his rotten regime.
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