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AMMAN — Crime detection rate went up to 77 per cent last year, compared with 62 per cent in 2012, according to the Public Security Department (PSD).

Detecting car theft, a recently widespread crime, stood at 81.5 per cent in 2013.

The number of crimes and misdemeanours stood last year at 21,308, slightly down from the year before “despite the refugee influx and the demographic changes the country saw in 2013”, said directors of PSD branches during a conference held on Saturday, quoted by the Jordan News Agency, Petra.

As for repeat offenders, security agencies have been arresting and referring them to court, said Director of the PSD Criminal Investigation Department Brig. Gen. Jamal Bdour, noting that this issue requires amending laws governing police work.

During the conference, Director of the Preventive Security Department Brig. Gen. Zuhdi Janbek announced that an Irbid-based arms manufacturing workshop was raided last year. Suspects were also accused of involvement in weapons trade.

Anti-Narcotics Department Director Col. Sami Askar said 8,945 suspects were involved in around 6,504 drug cases last year, adding that the authorities seized over 22 million Captagon pills, 444 kilogrammes of hashish and 5,007 kilos of marijuana in 2013.

AMMAN — Around 30 Jordanians gathered outside the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) premises in the capital on Saturday in solidarity with the residents of the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in Syria.

In Damascus, meanwhile, a UN official warned on Friday that the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian-dominated Yarmouk district was deteriorating as aid access to the area remains cut, The Associated Press reported.

The event was organised by the Save Yarmouk Camp Campaign-Jordan as part of similar events held in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria, Germany, Sweden, Canada and France, according to the initiative’s Facebook page.

Organisers handed the ICRC a memorandum asking the international organisation to support the camp’s residents and calling for forming a committee to assess the dangerous humanitarian conditions there and provide residents with food and medicines.

The memo also called for securing a safe route to deliver aid to the camp, which has been under siege for more than 180 days, resulting in severe shortages in food and supplies.

At least 35 people have died in the camp, mainly old people and children, according to the memorandum.

Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA official, cited reports of widespread malnutrition and the absence of medical care, including for pregnant women, AP reported.

“The profound civilian suffering in Yarmouk deepens,” he said.

Syrian rebels seized Yarmouk more than a year ago, part of a swathe of neighbourhoods around Damascus now held by opposition fighters.

Before the Syrian conflict, Yarmouk was a densely populated district of cheaply built multi-storey homes, but was called a “camp” since Palestinians came there as refugees during the 1948 Mideast war after Israel was created on Palestinian land, AP reported.

Hassan Masoud, one of the participants in Saturday’s demonstration, called on the ICRC to support the residents of Yarmouk camp.

“The mission of the ICRC is a humane one, so they should help the camp’s residents by providing them with aid,” he told The Jordan Times outside the ICRC premises in Amman’s upscale Deir Ghbar neighbourhood.

Mohammad Khawaja, another participant, said Palestinian refugees are paying the price of the internal conflicts in Arab countries.

“Palestinians were affected by the sectarian war in Lebanon. Now, Palestinians are paying the price of the conflict between the Syrian regime and the armed opposition,” he noted.

“I am really sad when I see [Arab countries] spend huge amounts of money on celebrations. When it comes to Palestinians, Arabs do nothing because they are afraid of Israel and the US,” Khawaja charged.

“We do not want the world to send them weapons, only food.”

Ahmad, who refused to give his family name, called for the withdrawal of armed groups from the camp to put an end to the siege.

“I ask all parties not to involve Palestinian camps in any internal conflict.”

Ahmad said both the regime and the rebels are to blame for the humanitarian crisis inside the camp.

Masoud claimed that the goal behind the siege of the camp is to send a political message that all Palestinian refugees will be deported.

Mohammad Saud, another participant, accused the Syrian regime of starving the people to break the opposition.

“The Syrian regime found that it could not stand against the people, so it decided to starve them. When a person sees his child dying of hunger, he will think twice before speaking against the regime.”

AMMAN –– The Ministry of Labour is scheduled to launch a job fair on Monday to offer over 1,400 employment opportunities for job seekers in various sectors.

The four-day event will put those looking for employment face-to-face with employers, the ministry said on its website, urging job seekers to register for the fair through labour offices in the governorates.

The ministry said it will secure transportation for job seekers to the site of the fair, which will be held at the Amman employment office in Abdali near Parliament headquarters.

On the first day of the fair, those seeking jobs in the telecommunications and services sectors will be able to navigate through 435 available opportunities that include programming engineering, telecom engineering, information technology, human resources, auditing, project management, and sales and marketing.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the job fair will showcase 720 jobs available in the textile sector in the Dleil and Sahab industrial zones.

The last day of the event will focus on the hospitality sector, hotels and restaurants, where 274 vacancies are on offer, according to the ministry.

The ministry launched the National Employment Campaign in January last year with the goal of creating thousands of jobs for Jordanians in cooperation with the private sector.

More than 12,000 unemployed Jordanians were secured jobs during the first phase of the campaign, titled “We are all partners.”

The second stage of the campaign, launched on December 15 with the aim of creating 25,000 job opportunities in 11 sectors, was extended until further notice due to the “huge turnout” of job seekers. 

AMMAN –– The Labour Ministry has released a list of the names and nationalities of guest workers whose work permits expired by the end of 2013.

The new list, which the ministry published at the beginning of this month, includes 105,270 illegal guest workers, of whom nearly 60 per cent are Egyptian.

The report, posted on the ministry’s website, named 62,784 Egyptians whose work permits expired at the end of last year.

Sri Lankans constituted the second largest number of workers with expired permits after Egyptians (12,133), followed by Filipinos (7,840), Bangladeshis (7,461) and Indonesians (4,859).

With regard to illegal workers from other Arab countries, the ministry report named 2,224 labourers from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco.

The ministry said the work permits of 7,969 guest workers from various countries — such as China, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Ethiopia — also expired in late 2013.

This is the third time that the Labour Ministry has published the names of illegal guest workers on its website.

It previously issued a list of 92,837 guest workers whose permits became invalid by the end of 2012 and a list of 98,962 labourers whose work permits expired by the end of 2011.

Labour Ministry Secretary General Hamadah Abu Nijmeh told The Jordan Times late last year that there are around 265,000 guest labourers who have valid work permits and around 500,000 illegal workers.

Egyptians make up around 60 per cent of the guest labour force in Jordan, according to the official.

AMMAN — Five people, who suffered from smoke inhalation during a fire that claimed the lives of two children in a house in Zarqa on Friday, were discharged from hospital on Saturday, official sources said.

The five people and two children, all from the same family, were sitting in a room in their two-storey house in the Bireen area in Zarqa Governorate, a senior official Civil Defence Department (CDD) official said.

“Our investigation showed that there was a leak from a gas heater in the room which caused the fire,” the CDD official added.

The two children, both under the age of 10, suffered third degree burns and died instantly, he told The Jordan Times.

The five other family members suffered from smoke inhalation and were rushed to Prince Hashem Military Hospital, according to the source.

The official added that firefighters managed to control the blaze and prevented it from spreading to other parts of the house.

In late December, three people, including a woman with a disability, were killed in two separate incidents related to gas heaters in Irbid, some 80km north of Amman.

A 65-year-old woman with a disability was burned to death by a gas heater in her room in the basement of a building, with an initial investigation indicating that the victim was attempting to move the heater but could not because of her medical condition, and it overturned, causing a fire.

In the second incident in Irbid, an 85-year-old man and his 75-year-old wife died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to insufficient air circulation in their room where they had a gas heater on.

CDD officials have repeatedly warned that insufficient ventilation, leaving gas and kerosene heaters on overnight and filling heaters with kerosene while they are on are some of the major causes of accidents, in addition to failure to follow proper safety procedures.