"تقارير إدارة أقسام ومناطق الأراضي المحتلة في بلاد الرافدين لسنة ١٩١٨. المجلد I" [ظ‎‎١‎٧‎١] (٤٧٠/٣٤٧)

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(E) Fishing Licences amount to Rs. 52/- and Tobacco Licences have so far
produced Rs. 1,870/-.
Spedal Revenues, ‘Ali Gharbi. —Special revenue receipts amount to Rs. 9,490/7,
a drop of Rs. 3,000/- on last year’s receipts. This was chiefly due to the vegetable
tax bringing in only Rs. 1,377/— as against Rs. 5,500/— the year before. It should
be mentioned, however, that the person who bought the right to collect the tax
last year lost heavily over the transaction, and consequently no one would bid for
it this year.
The sheep tax also declined from Rs. 3,600/- to Rs. 1,600/-.
In passage fees Rs. 4,882/8 were received.
There is no liquor tax as there are no liquor shops in this district, the majlis,
which included a Jew, being dead against their introduction.
(e) Customs (‘Amarah). —Sums amounting to Rs. 37,169/- have been collected
in customs duty and on post parcels. Some Rs. 17,727 of the total is on parcels,
and this latter brought in on an average Rs. 3,599/- a month till May, when facilities
ceased. This when reopened will be a good source of revenue to Government.
The average monthly sum realised in customs amounted to Rs. 2,500/-.
There was very little attempted smuggling of goods into ‘Amarah to avoid
customs duty, and in the cases where this was found out, double and sometimes
triple duty was charged.
Customs at ‘Ali Gharbi. —Customs dues amounted to Rs. 16,501/- or Rs. 3,300/-
less than last year. This decline in receipts may be attributed to the more settled
state of the country, allowing the caravans from Persia to traverse other routes to
Kut, Baghdad, and ‘Amarah; also to the amount of sickness there has been in the
Pusht-i-Kuh of late. The chief imports are wool, carpets, tobacco, tents, silk,
and opium.
(f) Compensation of 'Amarah (Town). —During the past few months the Govern
ment has unavoidably taken over many houses and compounds belonging to
civilians. Houses, walls, and date-palms have been demolished to make room for
Government buildings and in many cases no records were kept as to damage done
and the value thereof.
There are at present 15 such cases of long standing, some of which date back
to the occupation of ‘Amarah, in which very few previous records are traceable;
but this matter has been referred to the General Headquarters and should be settled
shortly. Two cases which had been outstanding since 1917 have been successfully
settled. There still remain, however, a^ very large number of cases in which the
claimants have not, up to the present, applied for compensation, and the formation
of an Assessment Board has been suggested, with a British officer as President,
who could make it their special work to go into such matters. It would, however,
be a big task and would probably extend over at least two months.
3. Irrigation.— There were two measures urgently required which have not
yet passed into effect, irrespective of schemes which would secure extended irrigation
outside the present limits. One is the deepening of the Musharrah Canal, which
requires the aid of a mechanical dredger, hitherto unobtainable. And the other
is the deepening of the Mudailil Canal, not impracticable even without a mechanical
dredger, but difficult to accomplish owing to scarcity of fallahs, along with attendant
works such as a protective bund along the edge of the Dujailah Canal to guard
against possible floods due to breaches higher up the river. In the latter case an
effort was made to dig the canal by means of Arabs, but as Shaikh Mutashshar
could only produce 100 men, instead of the 1,000 demanded, this work had to be
abandoned.
Late in the year, in September, sanction was accorded to a scheme for damming
the Duwairij and diverting its waters into the Shatt-al-A‘mah. This work had
to be abandoned for lack of labour. The same applies to a promising scheme
proposed by the D.D.I., Tigris, for diverting the waters of the Tib from its inroads
on the Nahar Sa‘ad by means of a protective bund. At the time the scheme might
have been put into execution no labour was available.
It may be observed, for the information of those who have charge of irrigation
projects, that from September to December all tribesmen flock to the rice districts
to assist in reaping and threshing, and the country is thus denuded of labour. It
would be unfair to prevent this efflux of potential labour because, for generations,
poor cultivators have looked to the rice-reaping season for a chance of earning their