Jordanians ‘at boiling point’ over refugees

AMMAN: On the doorstep of Syria’s conflict, Jordan is pinning hopes on this week’s donor conference in London to ease the burden on its debt-riddled economy of hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees.
King Abdallah, one of dozens of world leaders due to attend Thursday’s meeting, has warned his country is at “boiling point.”
“Sooner or later, I think, the dam is going to burst,” he told the BBC, pointing to strains on employment, infrastructure, education and health care.
Jordan hosts more than 630,000 of the roughly 4.6 million Syrian refugees overseas, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Jordanian government gives a much higher estimate of 1.4 million, because many of them are unregistered.
The influx has overwhelmed the resource-poor country of 9.5 million people — including migrants and refugees — much of which is desert.
“Jordan can no longer continue to provide aid to Syrian refugees without long-term international assistance,” Planning Minister Imad Al-Fakhoury said Sunday at a meeting with representatives of donor countries.
He warned the kingdom could be “forced to take painful measures that will lead to a greater influx of refugees to Europe if Jordan is left on its own to deal with the consequences of the Syria crisis.”
In 2016 alone, the refugees will cost Jordan $2.7 billion. Amman says the Syrian crisis has cost the country $6.6 billion over the past five years.