Mohammed al-Bashir: Restoring security in Syria is the new government’s top priority

Syria’s new caretaker prime minster of the transitional government, Mohammed al-Bashir, announced in a TV interview that “restoring security in Syria has been the government’s top priority since the first day amid the challenges facing the new government and the measures that could be taken to improve the economic and service situation.”

Al-Bashir said: “Since the first day that the deposed Assad regime was toppled and the Military Operation Department entered into all Syria, we set some main points as priorities, chief among them security and stabilization in the region.”

Al-Bashir added: “The government also focused on providing the basic services in the recently liberated areas such as bread, water, fuel and other basic services that people cannot live without.”

Al-Bashir made it clear that “we have worked hard to keep the bakeries working and that the water institutions continue to pump water to houses and the supply of power to homes persists. We seek hardly to preserve all these services and we achieve a significant success.”

Al-Bashir added that “we inherited a crumbling infrastructure, fragile services, and flabby administrations, therefore, improving the services to reach the level which the Syrian people aspire to and deserve it needs time.”

Al-Bashir pointed out that “the previous regime left behind a demolished legacy, especially the energy sector and that the power stations were mostly out of service and work below their capacity due to the bombardment targeting these facilities.”

Al-Bashir continued that “repairing the power stations need time to increase the hours of electrical supply to homes during the coning period.”

Regarding the region’s economy, Al-Bashir said: “The wheel of the Syrian economy nearly came to a halt throughout Bashar al-Assad time in power, as the gross domestic product shrank by more than 85%.”

He stressed that “the task is difficult and requires great time and efforts, but the government is committed to achieving tangible improvement in services and infrastructure, and working to build a stable economy that serves the aspirations of the Syrian people.”

He concluded his speech by saying: “We now seek to implement a policy of economic openness, fight monopoly, reduce customs duties, and encourage investment.”