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In the autumn of 2022, Embassy of Japan in Türkiye organized a press tour in the southeast region of Türkiye. On November 15th, His Excellency Mr. Kazuhiro SUZUKI, the Ambassador of Japan to Türkiye, and the Turkish press visited the wastewater treatment plant in Hatay, which was constructed under the Japanese ODA Loan project "Local Authorities Infrastructure Improvement Project".

Hatay - City Located nearby the Border -

Many Syrians fled to Türkiye since the Syrian Civil War broke out in 2011. As of November 2021, 3.73 million Syrians have been granted the temporary protection. Compared to the total population of Turkish people in Türkiye, which reached to around 84 million in 2021, the rate of the number of the registered Syrians are approximately 4%. Especially, the large population of Syrians live in cities nearby the border between Türkiye and Syria. Massive investment is needed in social infrastructure such as water and sewerage systems and waste treatment plants in these regions; however, municipalities, where the population rapidly increased in the last couple of years due to the influx of Syrians, have limited access to the sufficient budget for infrastructure development.

JICA has been working with Iller Bank (the Turkish state-owned development and investment bank) to conduct the ODA Loan project, "Local Authorities Infrastructure Improvement Project", to the support municipalities, which have received the large number of Syrians, for social infrastructure projects. Hatay, which is one of the target areas of this project, has the border with Syria in east and south area. Sharply increasing population from around 71,000 as of 2014 to around 130,000 as of 2019 is a crucial issue in Kirkhan district of Hatay. JICA supported the construction of Wastewater Treatment Plant in Kirkhan district in order to correspond to the declining hygienic environment caused by increasing population. During this press tour, His Excellency Mr. SUZUKI Kazuhiro, the Ambassador of Japan to Türkiye, visited the Wastewater Treatment Plant facility, which completed the construction in December 2018.

Wastewater Treatment Plant in Kirkhan

The Wastewater Treatment Plant supports 13,000 people's life

The participants to the press tour visited the facility in a fine day of the autumn. As the opening remarks, His Excellency Mr. SUZUKI Kazuhiro, the Ambassador of Japan to Türkiye, Mr. Muhammed İkbal POLAT, Director General of Hatay Water and Sewerage Administration (HATSU), Mr. Muzaffer Akgüner, Iller Bank Adana Regional Director, and Ms. TANAKA Yuko, Chief Representative of JICA Türkiye Office, commented that the infrastructure development was the urgent issue in Kirkhan district where Syrians consist of around 30% of residences, and that this project played an important role to contribute to supporting the people of Hatay.

Group photo after the opening remarks (Mr. Akgüner, Ms. TANAKA, Mr. SUZUKI and Mr. POLAT)

During the site visit, staffs of HATSU, the executing agency of this sub-project, explained each equipment's role and mechanism of the facility, and how the sewerage water would be treated to become clean water through sewerage disposal processes over time. JICA continues to work with various municipalities to support the lives of people.

Sewerage canal

Sewage water after completing cleaning process