AMMAN, 30 July 2007 — Two Jordanian ministers resigned yesterday over reported contamination of water at a Jordanian village that led to the hospitalization of more than 1,000 people.
King Abdallah has issued a decree “accepting the resignation of Water Minister Mohammad Al-Alem and Health Minister Dr. Saad Al-Kharabsheh as of Sunday,” a royal court statement said.
The two ministers apparently quit in response to pressure by the press and recurrent calls for their resignation by members of the lower house of Parliament.
The lawmakers held the two ministers responsible for hundreds of diarrhea and high fever cases that were recorded earlier this month at the Mansheyet Bani Hassan village, 70 kilometers East of Amman.
Last week, a government-commissioned probe revealed that a nonfatal parasite was the cause of the outbreak of the disease, a case that dominated the attention of the Jordanian public opinion over the past two weeks.
“Responsibility in this case was twofold — moral and technical. And because the two ministers concerned have a moral obligation they tendered their resignation today,” Prime Minister Maaruf Bakhit told a news conference.
“I recommended to his majesty King Abdallah that their resignations be accepted and a royal decree was issued to accept them.” But Bakhit also praised Al-Kharabsheh (health) and Al-Alem (water).
The two former ministers “worked sincerely” during the crisis this month when hundreds of people in the town of Mansheyet Bani Hassan in the northern governorate of Mafraq fell ill with diarrhea and high fever after apparently drinking tainted water.
Bakhit said that other members of the Cabinet will carry on the duties of the two ministers until replacements are found.
Last week a government-commissioned probe showed that the outbreak had been caused by a nonfatal parasite known as cryptosporidium.
The government has meanwhile pledged to revamp the aging water network in the affected region and has been supplying fresh water by truck to the area. Bakhit insisted that the situation in Mafraq was back to normal. “The water is now free of all traces of the parasite,” he said.
The premier also announced the creation of a ministerial committee to investigate the water problem and pledged “to punish whoever failed in his duties.” Mafraq health chief Suleiman Affash was quoted in the Jordan Times newspaper yesterday as saying that the situation had returned to normal.
In another development, King Abdallah has issued a decree commuting the death sentences of seven people convicted last year after deadly riots in the southern Islamist hotbed of Maan, the state-run Petra news agency said yesterday.
Radical ringleader Mohammad Shalabi and six associates had been sentenced to death by hanging by the state security court in March 2006 over the 2002 Maan riots in which six people were killed. The royal decree commuted the sentences to 15 years of hard labor, Petra said.
Relatives of the convicted men, who had been accused of “terrorist acts,” had petitioned the government and the monarch for months in a bid to have the sentences overturned.
A soldier and a policeman were among those people killed during clashes between security forces and Islamists in Maan, where the authorities had launched a crackdown after a failed bid to kill the town’s police chief.
— With input from agencies
