JERASH - Jerash residents are proud of their city, home to one of the ancient Roman Decapolis which attracts thousands of tourists to town every year.
But at the level of day-to-day life, they used to cite many reasons that marred their positive look at their hometown, a perfect place for sightseeing and enjoying the fresh air of a hilly countryside 45km north of Amman.
They had issues regarding basic services, including worn out medical facilities and schools and poor infrastructure.
But much has changed since His Majesty King Abdullah paid a visit to the town in the spring of last year.
Now dwellers of the town and villages in the governorate inhabited by 168,000 people (2006 est.) need not go to other districts for a simple blood test. Residents and officials said Wednesday the Jerash Comprehensive Healthcare Centre, which was built at the orders of the King, serves as a one-stop-shop medical institution.
"The centre provides us with all the medical services and laboratory tests we need," Mohammad Odeibat, 55, a Jerash city resident, told The Jordan Times as Royal Court Adviser Yousef Issawi arrived in the town to follow up on the situation after the completion of projects implemented upon the Monarch's directives.
"To have a medical check-up for my chest, I had to go to [adjacent] Ajloun," Subhi Abdullah, 50, said. For more serious health problems, Amman was the destination of patients.
The comprehensive health centre replaced an old shabby rented facility located downtown.
Fawzi Irsheidat, the director of the new centre which was inaugurated in September last year, told reporters accompanying Issawi that the old healthcare centre occupied the second floor in a worn-out old building in the marketplace.
"It was surrounded by street peddlers, vegetable shops, garment stores in a crowded location where you could have hardly recognised there was even a health centre in the neighbourhood," he said.
The new facility includes a dental clinic, general medicine section, maternity, paediatric and chest disease wards, along with an X-ray unit, a pharmacy and a laboratory.
The director said most of these services were lacking before the facility came into existence.
Also yesterday, schoolchildren and teachers at Bab Amman Basic School said they now have a better learning environment, compared to the situation before a new school was built to replace an old one.
"The old school lacked a science lab and many educational facilities. There were only a few computers and five students had to sit together at one PC," teachers at the school said.
Inaugurated at the same time with the health centre, the new school has got it all, the educators said, adding that the learning experience now has such a different and pleasant taste that even class attendance has risen.
Jerash residents also said they feel very comfortable with a new road linking the city to Ajloun and highways leading to other governorates.
Jerash Mayor Akram Bani Mustafa told reporters the JD1 million road has already helped reduce traffic jams and ease congestions in the city centre.
By Mohammad Ghazal
© Jordan Times 2008
