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Newly purchased firefighting vehicles were delivered to the Municipality, and the Hatay Mayor, Mr. Lütfü Savaş had just finished his remarks, extending gratitude to UNDP, implementing UN agency of the Turkey Resilience Project in Response to the Syria Crisis (TRP), and the European Union (EU), the donor of the TRP; underlining the value of burden sharing in a city where the influx of Syrian refugees in Turkey had also resulted in an unprecedented demand for municipal services, including waste management and fire-fighting services.
As a matter of fact, additional demand for municipal services is always difficult for any city. However, it is even harder for the municipalities, where infrastructure and service delivery capacities were already stretched before the arrival of the refugees. According to the recent data, around thirty percent of the population in Hatay province are Syrians under Temporary Protection, who have fled the tragedy in their home country and took shelter in the bordering Hatay. The sudden and significant increase in population have worsened the existing challenges and have led to even higher levels of underserved communities, risking further deterioration of social cohesion.