Traders in Blast Devastated Beirut Areas Await Compensation

Political figures in Lebanon reportedly took an initiative to devise a compensation plan for the owners of shops affected by the Beirut Port explosion “to avoid a wave of exodus” from the area where merchants have not received any compensation from the state until this moment, the Saudi Asharq el-Awsat reported on Wednesday.

The head of Achrafieh's Merchants Association, Tony Eid, told the newspaper: “The situation of traders in the affected areas is deplorable. They haven’t received any compensation from the state until this moment.”

Merchants are “promised aid from the state, but it will be insignificant because the compensations will be at the official exchange rate of the dollar, which means that the real value of compensation will be about 10 per cent because the currency lost 80 per cent of its value,” he added in remarks to the daily.

Eid pointed to other financial losses that the state will not compensate for. He said the closures after the explosion, and the delay in reconstruction works, and the lockdown measures because of coronavirus have all taken a toll on their situation.

“Twenty percent of the stores did not resume any activity because of a liquidity shortage amid the worsening economic crisis and health measures taken against the coronavirus outbreak,” noted Eid.

He said the other sixty percent of shop owners open their stores intermittently, “it is difficult to mention anything that life is back to normal in these affected areas.”

A delegation of the Strong Lebanon parliamentary bloc had met with a delegation of Ashrafieh merchants and discussed a compensation plan for the affected families.