Coronavirus compounds woes of Lebanon's poverty-stricken Tripoli

Samir al-Hassan, a native of Bab al-Tabbaneh district in Tripoli, said he would rather risk contracting the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) than see his family starve to death.

This attitude is shared by many of Tripoli's residents, who have suffered from terrorism, extremism and sporadic rounds of violence that ravaged the city between 2007 and 2014, leaving many people impoverished.

Home quarantining for the city's poor means certain death, because they were ravaged by poverty before the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Today, they face the coronavirus threat with empty pockets, which has forced them to break the home quarantine rules and take to the street in search of daily sustenance.

This has prompted civil society organisations to conduct campaigns to distribute food rations and sterilisation materials to families in the city's poorest neighbourhoods.

Forced to work

Father of three al-Hassan said he has had to leave the house looking for daily work to supplement the food rations he had been receiving from aid organisations.

"If not for the food rations, we would have literally starved to death," he told Al-Mashareq.

"We have lived through years of fighting and witnessed the proliferation of extremist groups into our neighbourhoods, which exacerbated our woes," he said. "No sooner than that ended, we were hit with an economic crisis, unemployment and now the coronavirus."

"But no matter how deeper in poverty I sink, I will never fall into the trap of extremist groups, and this is true for all poor youth, who now know that these groups will lead us to our doom," he said.

COVID-19 has so far infected 14 people in Tripoli out of a total of 632 cases countrywide and 20 total deaths.

Kaak (purse bread) vendor Mohammad Yakan is also finding it hard to comply with the quarantine measures "because my financial situation is very difficult and I have five children that I have to feed, with no income other than what I earn from this cart", he said.

Aid for low-income areas

Tripoli mayor Riad Yamaq said the municipality allocated three billion Lebanese pounds ($2 million) to be distributed "very soon" in low-income areas, in the form of vouchers redeemed at small shops.

Each voucher is valued at 75,000 pounds ($50), he said, adding that the municipality also contributed 150 million pounds ($99,000) toward the purchase of a coronavirus testing machine for the government hospital.

"We are aware of the suffering of the working poor class, whose daily work was disrupted by coronavirus, as many operate kaak and vegetables carts, or work in cafés for 20,000 pounds ($13) a day," he told Al-Mashareq.

Yamaq also downplayed the possibility of extremist groups exploiting the virus situation to recruit the poor with financial enticements.

"I am not concerned at all because those groups are finished in the city" and people have become aware "that they have brought them nothing but woes and suffering", he said.

Utopia association president and founder Chadi Nachabe said Tripoli, whose population tops 800,000 people, is "the city of the poor, because more than 60% of its population live in very difficult circumstances, and the unemployment rate exceeds 35%".

Utopia along with a large number of civil society organisations and the Lebanese Red Cross launched the Utopia Task Force campaign to distribute food rations and sterilisation materials to Tripoli residents "to keep them at home", he said.

The ration includes enough rice, sugar, lentils, chickpeas, beans, oil, cheeses, Halva, canned foods and sterilisation and cleaning material to last for 10 days, he told Al-Mashareq.

Nachabe said COVID-19 "will likely increase the poverty rate, which necessitates that we join our efforts to help residents and make them stay at home and observe social distancing".

Meanwhile, the Azm and Saade Association mobilised its social and health units to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, an association official who preferred not to be named told Al-Mashareq.

Azm, in co-operation with the Tripoli municipality, launched an "awareness campaign and distributed sterilising materials, masks and food rations, while it continues to disinfect streets and neighbourhoods", he said.

It also has contributed 80 million pounds ($53,000) toward the purchase of the coronavirus testing machine for the government hospital, he added.