Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi said on Saturday that successive administrations in the past decades failed in constructing a sufficient number of residential units to cope up with the growing Egyptian population.
He added, during the opening of new housing projects in Badr City outside Cairo, that this failure opened the door for the presence of a large number of slums around Egypt.
“Egypt as a state could not solve its problems over this period,” the president said. “This was true to housing, education, health and all other files.”
He called for connecting all the problems together, referring to the inadequacy of necessary resources for solving these problems.
Changing lives
President Sisi said Egypt had overcome a large number of problems since 2011.
Egyptians, he said, could have ended killing each other, jeopardising the future of their own country.
“We are solving our own problems and will continue to solve them.”
Nevertheless, the president underscored the importance of putting Egypt’s population growth under control.
He said his administration relocates slum dwellers to new housing that is fully furnished.
President Sisi revealed that each of the flats offered to the slum dwellers for free costs LE450,000 to construct and furnish.
He said Egypt, as a state, charges the slum dwellers nothing for all this.
“We do this only to change the lives of people for the better,” the president said.
He called for charting Egypt’s future in the light of the actual resources of the country.
Subsidies put in order
President Sisi said some of the problems remained without solutions for a long time in the past.
He added that his administration is serious about solving these problems.
The president noted that he would not brush these problems aside.
“I will not say this is none of my business,” President Sisi said. “To keep going, we have to solve these problems and put things in order.”
He highlighted the importance of restructuring food subsidies.
President Sisi revealed that Egypt spent two trillion pounds to subsidise food for members of the public in the past ten years.
The amount of money spent in this regard, he said, could even be three trillion pounds.
He said some people were shocked when he talked a few days ago about the need for raising the price of subsidised bread for those receiving food rations.
President Sisi noted that the subsidy system was created a long time ago in the light of the conditions prevalent at that time.
“Nevertheless, we cannot keep going like this,” the president said.
Improving lives
The president said a loaf of bread sold at the nation’s bakeries for two piasters in the past, even as the actual cost of its making was 18 piasters.
The price of the loaf was then raised to five piasters, even as it cost the government 65 piasters.
President Sisi noted that a citizen whose income was LE500 in 2011 now earns LE2,000.
He said the rise in prices should be accompanied by an improvement in the living conditions of people.
