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Source: AFP
Seated connected the pavement extracurricular a slope successful cardinal Damascus, Abu Fares's look is worn with exhaustion arsenic helium waits to cod a tiny information of his pension.
"I've been present for 4 hours and I haven't truthful overmuch arsenic touched my pension," said the 77-year-old, who did not privation to springiness his afloat name.
"The currency dispensers are under-stocked and the queues are long," helium continued.
Since the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad past December, Syria has been struggling to look from the aftermath of astir 14 years of civilian war, and its banking assemblage is nary exception.
Decades of punishing sanctions imposed connected the Assad dynasty -- which the caller authorities are seeking to person lifted -- person near astir 90 percent of Syrians nether the poorness line, according to the United Nations.
The liquidity situation has forced authorities to drastically bounds currency withdrawals, leaving overmuch of the colonisation struggling to marque ends meet.
Prior to his ousting, Assad's cardinal state Russia held a monopoly connected printing banknotes. The caller authorities person lone announced erstwhile that they person received a shipment of banknotes from Moscow since Assad's overthrow.
Source: AFP
In a state with astir 1.25 cardinal nationalist assemblage employees, civilian servants indispensable queue astatine 1 of 2 authorities banks oregon affiliated ATMs to marque withdrawals, capped astatine astir 200,000 Syrian pounds, the equivalent connected the achromatic marketplace of $20 per day.
In immoderate cases, they person to instrumentality a time disconnected conscionable to hold for the cash.
"There are sick people, elderly... we can't proceed similar this," said Abu Fares.
'Meagre sums'
"There is simply a wide deficiency of cash, and for that crushed we deactivate the ATMs astatine the extremity of the workday," an worker astatine a backstage slope told AFP, preferring not to springiness her name.
A haphazard queue of astir 300 radical stretches extracurricular the Commercial Bank of Syria. Some are sitting connected the ground.
Afraa Jumaa, a civilian servant, said she spends astir of the money she withdraws connected the question fare to get to and from the bank.
"The conditions are hard and we request to retreat our salaries arsenic rapidly arsenic possible," said the 43-year-old.
Source: AFP
"It's not acceptable that we person to walk days to retreat meagre sums."
The section currency has plunged successful worth since the civilian warfare erupted successful 2011, anterior to which the dollar was valued astatine 50 pounds.
Economist Georges Khouzam explained that overseas speech vendors -- whose enactment was outlawed nether Assad -- "deliberately reduced currency flows successful Syrian pounds to provoke accelerated fluctuations successful the marketplace and crook a profit".
Muntaha Abbas, a 37-year-old civilian servant, had to instrumentality 3 times to retreat her full wage of 500,000 pounds.
"There are a batch of ATMs successful Damascus, but precise fewer of them work," she said.
After a five-hour wait, she was yet capable to retreat 200,000 pounds.
"Queues and much queues... our lives person go a bid of queues," she lamented.
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Source: AFP
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