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Iran gov't finally addresses air pollution problem in Khuzestan

Politics Materials 21 February 2017 16:48 (UTC +04:00)
The Iranian government has allocated financial aid to help fight the air pollution and dust in the Khuzestan province, after people in the province took it to the streets in protest, following weeks of heavy dust in the air.
Iran gov't finally addresses air pollution problem in Khuzestan

Tehran, Iran, February 21

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

The Iranian government has allocated financial aid to help fight the air pollution and dust in the Khuzestan province, after people in the province took it to the streets in protest, following weeks of heavy dust in the air.

First Vice Minister Es’haq Jahangiri authorized the allocation of $9.26 million to anti-dust plans to be carried out, Fars news agency reported February 21.

People in the province protested against having water and power shortages that had been caused by dust, which technical sources said was on occasions six times denser than the healthy threshold.

Jahangiri has ordered the Ministry of Agriculture to preside the implementation of the anti-dust measures which are going to be carried out in cooperation with four other ministries in an area of 30,000 hectares in Khuzestan.

Eleven cities in Khuzestan, which has a population largely composed of ethnic Arabs and Lurs, lost power last weekend after an intense dust storm, leading to water shortages when water and wastewater treatment plants were knocked offline.

Due to its arid climate, Khuzestan has, for many years, been suffering from dust pollutions that made it very difficult for its citizens to breathe. The dust storms that frequently hit Khuzestan are said to originate mainly in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, making it hard for the Iranian government to handle them singlehandedly.

On February 18, President Hassan Rouhani attended an emergency session of the Crisis Management Center in Tehran, where he ordered Jahangiri, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli, and Khuzestan Governor Gholamreza Shariati to find a solution to the province’s problems as soon as possible.

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