The An-Najaf Centre's staff made an exploratory visit to 27 destitute families inhabiting slum housing in the Al-Makarama district of An-Najaf to observe their conditions and offer them what they can in the way of advice to solve their problems. What follows are the results and the information brought about by the visit:
1. These families, whose numbers vary between four and fourteen members to each family, each live in one bedroom not exceeding 16 square meters - the only refuge for the family to live and sleep in - and the roof is made of metal plates (ZINK?). Thus there is an urgent need to build roofs to protect the families from the heat of the summer sun and the rains of winter.
2. The majority of the families suffer from legal problems such as not possessing Iraqi citizenship due to their being unacquainted with the area and their not possessing sufficient money to make an application for citizenship. As a result of that, these families do not get a ration card for their requirements for food and other things, such as heating oil in the winter.
3. The majority of the families referred to above suffer from the head of the family being unemployed, due to their not having completed their school studies or not having a craft to help them get work.
4. Most of the children from the families suffer from illnesses due to the unhealthy environment in which they live, where heaps of refuse surround them everywhere because they live at random in an area that is not included in the municipal services for the province.
5. Most of the families do not have any domestic apparatus because they cannot buy them.
6. There are some special cases needing urgent care, among which the family of Um Zahara' who has an eight year-old girl afflicted with diabetes whose condition is very bad, the mother being unable to provide her daughter with medicine. Similarly, there is the family of Um Hussein who has two daughters afflicted with inflammation and cannot supply treatment to them due to her extremely difficult material circumstances.
