Feature: High living costs add to agony of displaced Syrians

Displaced Syrians suffer various hardships and the rising prices of commodities and food stuffs add more agony to their suffering, turning their living nightmare into an even worse one.

Hamid, a 29-year-old Syrian, suffered greatly when he fled his home in Syria's Aleppo province, when the clashes started raging and engulfing more areas till they finally reached his in Khishkhasheh town.

The relatively young man fled with his wife, two kids, his sister and her three children and sought refuge in an unfinished apartment in the town of Jaramana, east of capital Damascus.

Hamid's voice doesn't sound like as young as 29, but probably older as 50 or more. He is one of those who have received big burdens at such an early age, with life beating him unmercifully.

He talks about his life in Aleppo as if he was talking about a previous lifetime, in comparison with his new, unpleasant one.

"We used to have a comfy life in our town, we worked in farming and it was a beautiful life. We came to Damascus, and the situation here cannot be compared to our previous life," he said.

He noted he now works as a porter and earns 1,000 Syrian pounds a day (2 U.S. dollars).

"It's completely insufficient, as the prices of all commodities have skyrocketed."

The man says the abundance he used to enjoy has turned into a scarcity of everything, as he has turned from working in the green trees and farmland, into a porter at a construction site and resides in an under-construction house himself.

"I rented this house, which you can see, for 10,000 Syrian pounds (20 U.S. dollars) a month. This situation is bad here, as you can see we don't have electricity or water. Our neighbor brings us some water as a kind of charity."

The afflicted man said going to the marketplace for shopping is his worst nightmares, as he finds everything available at the market, but his pocket unavailable to afford his needs.

"When I visit the market, I find myself unable to buy most of the stuff, due to their high prices. The recent spike in the prices has really affected us more negatively," he said, adding that "I need 25,000 Syrian pound (52 U.S. dollar) a month just to feed my kids with the very basics."

Hamid said he lives most of the month on charity he receives from neighbors and good doers.

His wife, Salma, says her two kids often sleep on empty stomaches, and when they get ill, they stay ill until they recover by themselves as they cannot afford a medical treatment.

"The high prices is the new monster haunting us and our kids. I feed my kids with bread and a cup of tea or some yogurt to stop their hunger, but despite that they sleep hungry most of the nights and seeing them like this makes me cry from helplessness."

The Syrian Ministry of Commerce issued on Thursday a decision to raise the prices of a number of basic materials such as fuel "petrol and diesel" and the cooking gas cylinders by almost 20 percent.

The decision was met with a huge wave of rejection and dismay from the majority of Syrian people, whose country's five-year-old conflict left no bright side in their lives.

Activists on Facebook called for a sit-in in Damascus on Sunday to protest against the government's decision for the price raise, which wasn't the first during the country's long-standing conflict.

To sooth the public dismay, President Bashar al-Assad ordered a salary raise of 7,500 Syrian pounds (15.5 U.S. dollars) for state servants, soldiers and workers in private sectors.

Observers and economists have contributed the raise in the prices of all food stuffs and currently the fuel and gas to the unstable exchange rate of the Syrian pound against the U.S. dollar.

Even though the government has undertaken several measures to slow down the slide in the value of the Syrian pound, which reportedly lost 1,200 percent of its pre-war value.

A recent UN report estimates that Syria has lost 259.6 billion U.S. dollars during the war and that its GDP has shrunk 55 percent.

The decline in the Syrian pound has largely affected the livelihood of the Syrians, and whose end could not be seen in the near future as the production wheel in Syria has almost come to a halt due to the raging conflict.

The World Food Program (WFP) said more than 11 million Syrians have fled their homes to other Syrian cities or to neighboring countries.

Humanitarian needs in Syria have increased more than 12 fold since the beginning of the crisis in 2011, as before the crisis, Syria was a middle-income country. Today, one in three Syrians lives under the poverty line.

Food production in Syria has dropped by 40 percent compared to pre-conflict levels, according to the WFP. Endit