Tartous Vision 2025.. Prospects and Challenges

In a rare initiative to involve the local community’s executive authority in planning and thinking, under the sponsor of Tartous Governorate, the Nation Building Movement, in cooperation with the Aram Damascus Center for Research and Studies, in Tartous held a discussion session on Saturday, June 23, 2018, entitled (Discussing Tartous Vision 2025.. Prospects and Challenges).

The workshop discussed the Tartous vision prepared by a committee assigned by the Governor with the aim of creating a state of partnership in decision-making through the involvement of civil society, the local community and the private sector.

The head of the Nation Building Movement, lawyer Anas Joudeh, pointed out that the aim of this workshop is to reach ideas and proposals that enrich the vision and contribute to clarifying and the development of executive plans for it through the participation of local community activities in the governorate because the social carrier is important for it.

"Our main goal is to consolidate the partnership that the Local Administration Law spoke about, which is the main line in the administrative reform project and an important pillar for achieving local development in all its economic, social, political and technical dimensions," Joudeh added.

In turn, Mr. Haider Marhej, Secretary General of Tartous Governorate, welcomed the efforts made to form the vision and implement it, hoping that the workshop would result in a set of ideas and proposals that would enrich the (vision).

The Director of Administrative Development in the Governorate, Rafat Suleiman, explained that the workshop is an important step in building the vision and setting the necessary and implementable plans. He said: “The vision is a qualitative initiative for the governorate and will be the compass for Tartous to truly become the Pearl of the Mediterranean, especially since it has many components that have not been properly invested in until now.”

According to business development consultant Dr. Hisham Khayat, achieving the workshop’s objectives requires addressing the current reality and securing an attractive legislative and enabling environment and human resources, in addition to involving the local community in the decision-making process in all governorates.

Engineer Firas Al-Ba’ini, a local development expert from Sweida Governorate, also believes that it is necessary to generalize this experience to the rest of the Syrian governorates, especially since the obstacles to investment and the factors for its development and success are very similar between several governorates, including brain drain, cheap labor wages, and the problem of marketing agricultural products.

Al-Baaini stressed that it is very important to continuously try to develop the right ideas to reach a solution to these problems in the future.

The workshop, which was attended by Tartous Governor, Lawyer Safwan Abu Saada, began with a presentation of a group of experiences and future visions presented by Professor Bashar Mubarak, Governance Sector Supervisor at the Aram Center for Studies, such as the Malaysian experience globally and a review of two previous local experiences, namely “Homs Dream” and “Our City in Aleppo,” and highlighting the distinction in the thinking approach between the two initiatives.

After that, Mr. Yassin Hussein read the draft of the Tartous Vision, after which the work groups were divided between the local administration, the private sector, the local community, and the media, according to the sectors included in the vision (trade, industry, agriculture, urban development, tourism, culture and media, and human resources) for the purpose of studying and discussing it in detail, in the presence of at least one member of the study committee in each group and the experts, to come up with recommendations about each sector.

In the closing session, the results and recommendations reached by the working groups were presented and discussed by the attendees.

It is worth noting that the results of the workshop and the recommendations presented, in addition to the opinions of the experts, will be prepared in the form of a detailed study to be presented to the Governor and the assigned committee to benefit from it in developing the vision towards expanding the sectors and working towards smaller localities in the governorate on the one hand and developing the capabilities of regional planning outside the governorate on the other hand.

The session was attended by a number of directors of public entities, heads of local councils, and members of the committee that studied the vision, in addition to a group of general managers, heads and members of local councils, in addition to representatives of the private sector, civil and local society, and the media, in addition to the cooperation of a number of experts, the former Minister of Industry, Mr. Adnan Salakho, and the doctor of economics, Mr. Samer Abu Ammar.