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AMMAN — Jordan has submitted a request to the EU demanding the inclusion of more facilities under the relaxed rules of origin on the Kingdom's exports to Europe, a government official said Sunday.

The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Supply submitted the request to enhance Jordan's benefit from the 2016 deal and is also in the process of revisiting the agreement as a whole, Minister of Industry, Trade and Supply Yarub Qudah told The Jordan Times on Sunday.

In the request, Jordan asked the EU to increase the number of zones benefiting from the agreement. Jordan also requested reviewing one of its conditions related to employing  a certain percentage of Syrian refugees for a factory to be eligible to export to Europe, said the minister.

The ministry also requested extending the duration of the agreement, Qudah added.

The minister added that they expect a meeting to be held in Brussels next month during which there will be a response to Jordan's request.

In July 2016, the EU and Jordan signed a deal under which manufacturers in the Kingdom can import up to 70 per cent of the raw materials used in production, and still label the finished products as" Made in Jordan", qualifying them for trade concessions.  

The agreement is valid for 10 years.

Under the deal with the EU, parties designated a total of 18 industrial and developmental zones as beneficiaries, while the relaxed rules will also be applied to other industries across the Kingdom as soon as 200,000 jobs are created for Syrian refugees, after they are issued work permits. 

For Jordanian industries to be able to benefit from the simplified rules of origin by the EU, each factory needs to have Syrian employees constituting no less than 15 per cent of its manpower. The rate will be increased to 25 per cent in the third year of the agreement, according to the Amman Chamber of Commerce.

AMMAN — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) have honoured Jordanian entrepreneur Afnan Ali, founder of Eureka Tech Academy, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Sunday.

The IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and AMF Director General Abdulrahman Al Hamidy presented the award in a conference organised by the fund in Marrakesh, Morocco, attended by major entrepreneurs from the Arab world.

The Eureka Tech Academy is an organisation specialised in the education of innovation and engineering, according to Petra. It is considered a local and regional pioneer in the development of children’s capabilities, aiming to teach its students the basics of engineering and invention in order to transform their ideas into tangible products and services.

AMMAN — The Ministry of Tourism and the Jordan Tourism Board (JTB) on Sunday announced the launch of 14 new airline routes to Jordan operated by the European low-cost carrier Ryanair, scheduled to start from summer 2018.

The first route will operate from Paphos (Cyprus) to Amman starting in March, followed by 9 new routes to Queen Alia Airport and four other to Aqaba’s King Hussein International Airport starting in the winter of 2018, according to a press release by the ministry. 

The new routes are expected to bring up to 500,000 customers per year and 340 new on-site jobs, according to Ryanair’s Chief Commercial Officer David O’Brien.

At a press conference, Tourism Minister Lina Annab said that “this significant development in Jordan’s tourism industry will offer travellers a greater choice and value for money”, adding that “enhancing air connectivity is one of the key areas Jordan is focusing on, given its impact on unlocking economic growth through attracting business investment as well as spurring tourism”.

Asked about the benefits the Kingdom will receive from the new services, the minister explained that the country “will benefit not only from the cheap flights, but from the development and growth that this step will foster in the tourism sector”, citing the contributions that such growth will bring to the national economy and GDP. 

For his part, O’Brien stressed that Ryanair “is pleased to announce its entry in the Jordanian market”, noting that “the new routes will introduce new business and leisure travellers from 11 European countries to one of the most attractive tourist destinations in the world [Petra].”

JTB Managing Director Abed Al Razzaq Arabiyat said that “opening up new routes to the Kingdom from several crucial markets is key to efforts aimed at bringing tourists for extended stays in Jordan.”

“This is a culmination of efforts that reflects out a steadfast demand-driven approach,” he continued, adding: “We are now able to make the Kingdom more accessible to a broader segment of potential tourists whose impact on the local community will be substantial on every level of the tourism sector supply-chain.”

The launching of the new routes will be accompanied by several marketing campaigns based in the new source markets in Europe according to Annab, who noted that the new strategies would target specific types of tourists such as religious, adventure and business travellers. 

AMMAN — The total remittances of Jordanians working abroad stood at $3.7 billion (some JD2.6 million) in 2017, preliminary data of the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) showed on Sunday.

The total amount of remittances in 2017 was similar to that registered in 2016, the CBJ said in a statement, carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra. 

Jordanian expatriates’ remittances are one of the country’s major foreign currency inflows, alongside commodity and service exports, grants, loans and foreign aid.

Official figures estimate the number of Jordanian expatriates at around 750,000, the majority of whom lives in the Gulf states.

Over 300,000 Jordanian workers, mostly professionals and skilled labourers, are based in Saudi Arabia, followed by the UAE, with nearly 200,000 people.

AMMAN — The Youth Ministry and Jordan Media Institute (JMI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the field of ​​ building youth capacity in dealing with the media and information sources.

The MoU was signed by JMI Dean Basim Tweisi and Youth Minister Hadithah Khreisha, according to a JMI statement.

The MoU includes designing and developing three intensive training courses in media and informatics education, and implementing 22 intensive training programmes in 12 governorates that focus on countering extremism and challenging harmful media messages.

Five hundred male and female youth will benefit from it, according to the statement. 

AMMAN — Anti-Narcotics Department (AND) personnel have seized 200,000 drug pills hidden in a cargo vehicle, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Sunday.

A security source said that following a tip-off, AND personnel started an investigation on suspects allegedly hiding drug pills in “hardly accessible” parts of a vehicle to smuggle them into a neighbouring country.

Security forces arrested five suspects while attempting to cross the border and seized 200,000 Captagon pills.

AMMAN — Despite an increasing number of initiatives implemented to raise awareness on accessibility for people with disabilities in Jordan, the Kingdom still lacks the basic infrastructure to help people with disabilities “enjoy the small pleasures of daily life”, according to Lana Bataineh, a Jordanian living with ALS, a motor neurone disease that causes the death of neurons controlling voluntary muscles.

Citing the lack of wheelchair accessible facilities, she noted that “the difficulties we think of are just a fraction of what we have to endure in order to leave our house,” noting “before I go anywhere, I always need to do a site-check ahead of making the trip. Wheelchairs don’t fit in most elevators and the bathroom stalls are usually too small to fit wheelchairs”.

Technological innovations have been increasingly used to facilitate the lives of people with disabilities, including in Jordan and the Arab world, a recent research by the Innovation Group, a J. Walter Thompson Intelligence entity, showed. 

In its latest report titled “The Future 100 for the MENA”, which outlines the 100 latest trends, themes and opportunities growing in the Arab region, the group highlighted the spread and pace of technological change and the increasingly “tech-savy” aspect of young Arabs.

Mennah Ibrahim, the Middle East and Africa director at the Innovation Group, said: “2018 is going to be the year in which 5G and augmented reality [AR] drive massive change in our interactions with the Internet. It will also be marked as the year of ‘out-of-this world’ experiences as technology sends immersion into total hyper-speed.”

In Jordan, several startups and companies have been leading the way of this technological advance, some focusing exclusively on using it to improve the lives of people with disabilities.

Communicating through technology 

For Jordanian Mahmoud Darawsheh, founder of Mind Rockets Inc., “we now have the technology to make any service deaf-friendly, furthering the independence and engagement of the deaf community into our society”.

This was the reason behind the creation of RAMZ, a mobile app that uses assistive technology in the form of an animated avatar to translate text or speech to sign language. 

“Sign language has a basic common vocabulary but each country, language and accent has special sign language,” Darawsheh noted, stating that, out of 360 million deaf people over the world, of whom 80 per cent are illiterate, 12.6 million live in the Arab world.

In January, Adli Kandah, director general of the Association of Banks in Jordan, announced the launch of Signcom, a 24/7 live interpretation support for clients with hearing disabilities. 

The app, which allows deaf and mute clients to use live video calls to privately communicate with bank tellers without having to be accompanied by a third person, aims at ensuring privacy and access to equal banking for all, with no additional cost for the people with disabilities. 

These innovations are not limited to Jordan, as many Arab companies have developed their own assistive technologies, such as the Palestinian “Swift Braille”, an app that helps the blind and visually impaired communicate with others in writing. 

Through a customisable soft keyboard, users can type by connecting Braille dots together using one or two fingers to form letters and words.

Further challenges 

However, facilitating the lives of people with disabilities entails much more than communicability, according to Bataineh, who noted that “going around in Jordan is, if not impossible, extremely challenging for someone in a wheelchair”.

A number of initiatives have been launched over the past few years to raise awareness on the issue and help create change.

In November last year, a team from the Higher Council for Affairs of Persons with Disabilities (HCD) started an online initiative that aimed to highlight the difficulties of access to touristic sites across the Kingdom.

Through videos posted on their social media pages, the council showed the general public “what it’s like for a person with a disability to go sightseeing in Madaba” and “what they missed in the visits compared to other tourists”, Ghadeer Al Haris, media spokesperson at HCD told The Jordan Times.

“We believe that any person should be able to enjoy visiting the beautiful tourist attractions we are so proud of in Jordan,” she continued, noting that “the smallest changes and adjustments in touristic sites can go a long way and help us in achieving the goal of accessibility for all”.

Meanwhile, some schools in Jordan, such as Alliance Academy in Al Yadudah, are also trying to breakdown these challenges by creating “inclusive school systems” allowing students with diverse abilities and backgrounds to learn together. 

“Traditionally, students with disabilities have been segregated from students without disabilities by being placed in separate schools. This approach has isolated people with disabilities from their communities,” said Aya Aghabi, a wheelchair user who was invited to tour the school, noting: “Many people worry that including students with disabilities in the classroom will impede the development of both students with and without disabilities. However, research proves otherwise.”

Turning the trend into a sustainable change 

In light of this booming innovational trend, educational institutions have taken steps to implement their own teaching programmes in assistive technology.

 In 2013, Princess Sumaya University of Science and Technology (PSUT) launched a course titled “Principles of assistive technology”, which teaches students ways to develop and apply professional skills in the field of assistive technology. 

“The course covers a wide range of assistive technologies and rehabilitation topics with emphasis on the human and technology interfaces,” the course syllabus read, noting that topics range from control devices to seating and positioning, powered mobility, driving and rehab robotics, among others.

“Technology advances are driving creative innovation to help people with disabilities navigate the world independently,” said Ibrahim, noting that big brands are also beginning to recognise the role they can play in this domain, with Toyota who announced in 2016 the launch of a wearable device for the blind which uses sound and vibrations to direct the wearer.

Disney’s “Feeling Fireworks” provides visually impaired with a tactile experience that aims to replicate the experience of fireworks while Listerine’s “Feel Every

Smile” film and app uses facial recognition technology and phones’

vibrations to bring the feeling of knowing someone is smiling at them to the visually impaired.

AMMAN — The number of tourists to Petra rose by 40 per cent in January 2018 when compared to the same month of last year, according to Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority (PDTRA) Chief Commissioner Falah Omoush.

 The Jordan News Agency, Petra, quoted Omoush as saying that a total of 34,616 foreign tourists visited Petra  last month, compared to 24, 094 in January of 2017.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Commissioner of PDTRA Suleiman Farajat pointed out that the overall improvement of tourism throughout last year was 34 per cent compared to the previous year, including foreign visitors, Arabs, Jordanians and school trips. 

The number of foreign visitors reached 470,167 people last year, marking a 50 per cent increase compared to 2016 when the number of visitors reached 321,143, while the number of Arab and Jordanian visitors to Petra reached 129,246 during the past year, he said.

Farajat added that the total number of foreign, Arab and Jordanian visitors to Petra in 2017 reached 620,367 compared to 464,154 visitors in 2016, indicating that tourism improved significantly by 33 per cent in 2017 compared to 2016.

He said the authority expects a "significant" rise in the number of tourists to the rose-red city in 2018.

AMMAN —  The Treasury in Petra on Sunday was lit up in orange and blue to mark World Cancer Day. 

The event, held under the patronage of HH Princess Dina, president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), was organised by the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority (PDTRA) in cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, according to a PDTRA statement.

Princess Dina noted that countries all over the world are illuminating their most famous monuments in orange and blue, stressing that Jordan is at the forefront of this initiative. 

“Having our ancient city of Petra, one of the seven wonders of the world, crowning this list is very fitting. As Petra, the City of ‘Challenge and defiance’ that withstood the test of time, the natural elements and manmade exploitations, still stands tall to this day, this time adorned in the colours orange and blue, to send a message of determination and hope to every cancer patient all over the world,” she added. 

Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Lina Annab said: “Jordan joining this campaign through the lighting up of the Treasury in Petra, is very much in line with the Kingdom’s achievements in the fight against cancer, as well as our efforts in promoting tourism at the same time, as this campaign will be promoted globally on social media.”

Falah Al Omoush, who is the head of the PDTRA Council, stated that Petra has joined many humanitarian campaigns in the past including Autism Day, Fighting Violence Against Women Day and World Tourism Day.  

World Cancer Day, which is marked globally on February 4, is organised by the UICC, the leading global organisation fighting cancer.

AMMAN — Public transport fares are to be increased by 10 per cent as of Wednesday, under a decision adopted by Land Transport Regulatory Commission (LTRC) Director General Salah Lozi on Sunday.

The decision covers medium and large public buses and all taxis, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Lozi said that the decision was made after the LTRC studied all changes related to fuel prices and inflation rates that placed additional burdens on operators through hikes in operational costs and a decrease in revenues, which in turn negatively affected the quality of service due to negligence of maintenance issues, Petra reported. 

He noted that the commission was late in announcing the new tariffs due to change in the pricing process that affects rate amendment accredited by the LTRC, according to Petra. 

The last increase in transport fares was in December of 2016, a 10 per cent hike that covered all public transport means regardless of the type of fuel used in the vehicle.

The LTRC is responsible for the transport sector and providing incentives to operators, as well as boosting investments.

The transport sector accounts for 26 per cent of the gross domestic product, and investments related to it are “large and fruitful” Lozi said in previous remarks, noting that some of the challenges facing the sector are due to the fact that operators tend to be individuals rather than companies.