Former Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Ragheb questioned the feasibility of the new city that the government announced its implementation in an area 40 kilometers from Amman, considering that the new city would be a huge burden on Jordan, and the treasury would bear large sums.

He added during a lecture held at the Jordanian Society for Science and Culture on Saturday that the first step in establishing the new city is to support the national carrier line, and the first is also that instead of the Greater Amman Municipality announcing the establishment of a railway line between Amman and the new city, a railway line should be established between Amman and the airport.

He said that we have to act within our capabilities. When we transfer government institutions to a city 40 kilometers away from Amman, we increase the state of administrative sluggishness, stressing that building a new city to solve the problem of overpopulation in Amman and Zarqa is not a sufficient reason.

Abu Al-Ragheb criticized the plan to modernize the public sector, especially with regard to the abolition and merger of some ministries, stressing that the Ministry of Transport is considered one of the important and necessary ministries, especially at this stage, with plans to develop the city of Aqaba. He was surprised by the recommendation to merge it with another ministry.

Abu Al-Ragheb proposed to address the problem of administrative sluggishness by appointing an inspector in each ministry to contribute to solving people’s problems. At the same time, he found that setting the retirement age at 60 years is a mistake, and in the event that there is an employee capable of giving, we must stick to him even if he exceeds this age.

He said that Jordan is in dire need of investment, pointing out that Aqaba is an integrated city and has not failed as a special region, although there are governments that were against the authority of the Aqaba Special Region.

Abu Al-Ragheb talked about Arab and international events and their impact on Jordan, saying that the events in Syria have unfortunate results for the Syrians, and the country has become occupied in some of its regions and its wealth is controlled, and the war in Yemen is difficult, hoping for a reconciliation, and Iraq is in a state of internal conflict, and Libya is not stable Likewise, Tunisia, and the situation in Palestine is now at a stage in which we are witnessing attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, with the support of a new racist and fascist extremist government, and we have seen the extremist Ben Gvir how he challenges the world by storming Al-Aqsa Mosque, stressing that “Israel” does not respect the agreements, and at the same time the Arabs are not able to unify themselves to achieve any gains.

Abu Ragheb predicted that there would be a religious war in the future between “Israel” and the Arab countries.

Despite this situation in the Arab world, he said that the Gulf countries are witnessing growth in their economies, stressing that this reflects positively on Jordan.

He said that we have to be careful in Jordan, because we have strong institutions and a cohesive people, and we must not lose our confidence in the country. There are advantages represented by the strength of the dinar, the flow of remittances from Jordanians abroad, the development of the tourism situation, and security stability, in addition to the possibility of exploiting phosphates in the manufacturing industries. .

He said that America is always looking for an enemy, and it did not enter a country without leaving it destroyed, and now the United States is supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia and has provided it with support amounting to 70 billion dollars. Also, the West supports Ukraine until it achieves victory, and Russia will not allow it to lose the war, and therefore the process will be devastating for both countries.