Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – April 7, 1997

We flew to Tabriz from Tehran airport at eight in the morning. Mohsen and Mehdi and [Mr. Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Isa Kalantari, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, Mohammad Farhadi and Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh], Ministers of Energy, Agriculture, Oil, Culture and Higher Education and Industries, and Mr. [Hamid] Mirzadeh, [Head of the Program and Budget Organization] and [Mohammad Hassan] Rahimian, [Head of the Martyr Foundation], were with him.

It was an official welcome at Tabriz airport. We went to the Tabriz Petrochemical site for the opening. In the briefing, Mr. [Gholamreza] Aghazadeh, [Minister of Petroleum] and [Ahmed] Rahgozar, [CEO of Petrochemical Company] gave explanations. It was built with 850 million dollars and 60 billion rials, and the costs are paid from the profits of production. Its products are worth one million dollars a day.

Then we visited different departments. We pitched the new units. Then I uncovered the huge tablet they had made. [Mr. Mohsen Mojtahed Shabestri], Friday imam of Tabriz, said Khair Moghaddam. A gift was presented by the people of Tabriz as an appreciation for my work: an interesting watch on which they wrote in gold ink, every hour in my work has been worth a year.

I also gave the third degree [construction] badge to engineer [Gholamohsin] Najabat for designing and building the aromatic port of Imam and gave a detailed speech about the importance and advantages of petrochemical industries in Iran. The meeting was in the open. A strong wind was blowing and it was difficult to speak. Then we had lunch, prayer and a little rest.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, we left for Harris Plain. With the cars on the road, we were faced with the expression of people's feelings, especially in the villages along the way. We went next to Param village to open the Param dam. We visited the dam; With a capacity of four million cubic meters and regulation of seven million cubic meters of water from the dam. We went down to the point where the water exits the lake. In the meeting, we heard the report of Mr. Zanganeh [Minister of Energy] and Mr. Kiafar, the CEO of the [regional] water [organization] of the province, and then the report of the contractor from the IRGC; It was built at a cost of five hundred million tomans.

Then we went to Arbatan town to open the water canal built by the Ministry of Agriculture, 28 kilometers long, with a capacity of 17 cubic meters and suitable for irrigating seven thousand hectares of land, and at the end of the canal a dam with a capacity of 40 million cubic meters of water will be built. They said that if we give 500 million tomans, it will be completed this year. I accepted In the report, they said that 100,000 hectares of the lands of Tepe Mahor are planted with trees, and these 14,000 hectares of land are

They have put pressure on irrigation coverage and they are working on nine thousand hectares. All its industrial needs are produced in the province. I also spoke to encourage them and we visited and opened the diversion dam of the Zarnaq River. Zarnaq people had a passionate community. It has recently become a city.

We returned to Tabriz. We went to the Simcat factory built by the Shahid Foundation. I opened There are several people who are absconding from their property who took foreign currency and did not fulfill their commitment to bring the machines, and in response to this betrayal, the court confiscated their property. We opened the factory and started the next phase. In a ceremony, Mr. [Mohammad Hassan] Rahimian, [Head of the Shahid Foundation] explained.

Then, in the same ceremony, the Minister of Science and the Deputy Minister of Health and then the [Head] of the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents, the [CEO] of Refah Stores and the Deputy Minister of the Country explained their plans. I spoke briefly about all of them. All today's programs were broadcasted directly to the people of the province and people and officials gathered at the place of all the plans and listened to the program.

We went to the airport. It was ten o'clock at night. We prayed and had a short interview and returned to Tehran. It is raining in Tabriz. We reached home at twelve o'clock at night. Dinner was served on the plane.