ARRANGING the electricity feed for the giant New Delta project, the North Coast development scheme, the National Project for Sinai Development and the public transport modernisation projects was one of the topics of the review meeting that President Sisi’s called with Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli and Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker the other day. These projects point clearly to the width and depth of the energetic drive the state has pursued to rebuild and renew the national infrastructure in a way that contributes to the realisation of comprehensive and sustainable development as envisaged under the Vision Egypt 2030, the framework document that defines the paths and approaches for building Egypt as a new and modern state. And viewed together, these four major projects form the latest solid evidence of the developmental drive’s distinguishing characteristics: balanced geographical distribution, complementarity and advanced planning that ensures the modernity and sustainability of the entire spectrum of developmental action. From the country’s northern region overlooking the Mediterranean to the New Delta which aims to add up a large area of 2.2 million feddans to the country’s cultivable lands and through to the launching of integrated ventures for Sinai development and the implementation of an ambitious plan for modernising the transport sector including the building of up-to-date transport systems, the developmental drive is extending its reach and enhancing its capacity to improve the quality of life for citizens.
The efforts under way to modernise the transport component of the national infrastructure serves as a vivid example of those characteristics in action. One day ahead of the meeting, President Sisi made an inspection tour of the construction and engineering works to widen the central ring road which would facilitate the movement of people and goods between various parts of Greater Cairo. In conversations with engineers, technicians and workers at the sites he visited, President Sisi reasserted the importance of accomplishing such projects in accordance with the originally drawn up time frames. Raising the efficiency and capacity of roads has been one of the principal directions of the state’s drive to upgrade the entire transport sector, emanating from the view that improved and modernised transport serves the interests of the national economy and simultaneously ensures the fast, safe, comfortableand environment-friendly movement of people.
One case in point is the Light Railway Transit (LRT) train project which represents with its advantages and envisaged services a quality leap in the country’s public transport system and services. In remarks to newsmen while touring the project’s engineering works on Saturday, the prime minister noted how the LRT would in its first stage significantly enhance transport and connectivity between Greater Cairo’s eastern neighbourhoods and the New Administrative Capital, to be extended to the Ramadan 10 City on the Cairo-Ismailia highway. With an overall targeted length of some 100 kilometres, the LRT train is expected to go experimentally operational later this year following two years of intensive works to implement the project in record time as PM Madbouli said on Saturday, stressing that the government has been keen on observing the highest technical standards simultaneously with challenging time frames and costs in the implementation of developmental projects. By the time, it goes fully operational in its first stage with the opening of the New Administrative Capital, the LRT train would serve as a sign of the meticulous and massive efforts to modernise the transport sector of the state’s infrastructure.
