It was almost 4pm when Magdi Abdel-Hamid, 45, arrived at his house in Mansheyet Nasser, a one-bedroom apartment for a family of seven people. Abdel-Hamid works three jobs to meet the needs of his four children and sick mother who lives with them in the same apartment. During his break between jobs, Abdel-Hamid has to help his wife fill jars with water. “We do not have water in our house, and there is no sewage system, so we have to walk for 15 minutes every day to bring the family its needs of water,” said Abdel-Hamid. Despite the daily suffering, Abdel-Hamid does not mind or even complain, but he has one hope. “I do not want my children to live in this area when they get older. I work all day seven days a week to send them to school in order that they can have better living conditions in the future than their parents had,” he explained. “Living in this area is like serving a death sentence in prison.” With an estimated one million inhabitants, Mansheyet Nasser sits on the rocky area where Egypt's Eastern Desert plateau meets the Nile Valley. It lacks any formal provision of services, including water, sanitation, electricity, education and healthcare. It is also just one of many slum areas spread across the country. According to UN-Habitat, the UN human settlements agency, three of the world's 30 largest slums are found in Cairo, including Mansheyet Nasser and Ezbet Al-Haggana in Eastern Cairo and Dar Al-Salam. The figures are enough to show the magnitude of this worsening human disaster. Almost 16 million Egyptians live in the country's 1,221 ashwaaiyat, or shantytowns or informal housing areas, that have developed in the absence of the rule of law, or even of a functional government. Moreover, 35 of these areas are at risk of collapsing completely, while 281 are qualified as “indecent areas”. In Cairo, about 63 per cent of the population lives in 81 informal areas, constituting 11 million people out of the city's total population. In the Giza governorate there are 32 slum areas, while Alexandria has 41. As the UN Development Programme has put it in its Human Development Report, “Egypt is a big informal city with strips, just strips, of formality.” The informal housing problem began in Cairo in the mid-1960s, when unregulated urban encroachment on agricultural land started, often with little resistance from the government. It was not until the mid-1970s and 1980s that the government began to pay attention to the burgeoning informal areas, which had by then become a huge problem. Following the 25 January Revolution, successive governments have promised to introduce a comprehensive strategy to address the problem and make it a priority. Three years later, no progress has been made and the problem is getting more complicated as a result of the unstable economic and security situation. “The slums are hindering the comprehensive development of Egypt. They should be the number one priority for the incoming president and parliament,” Ahmed Rageh, an expert in urban planning at Cairo University, said. “As the poverty rates in these areas are over international standards, political ideas such as democracy, dialogue, the acceptance of the other and of minorities, and forgiveness and partnership are largely absent in them,” he added. The political polarisation that has spread in Egypt over the past three years has also spread in the slums. According to former assistant minister of the interior for general security Magdi Bassiouni, the majority of the thugs that were arrested during 2011 and 2012 came from slums areas in Cairo. Another study conducted by the National Centre For Social and Criminal Studies showed that 95 per cent of the children in prisons are from slums areas. “There are many drug-dealers living among us. We know who they are, but we cannot do anything about the problem as we know that nobody will be able to protect us from them if we do. Moreover, some of them are using money from drugs to feed their families,” said Hamoksha, a 25-year-old driver living in the Al-Gayara slum area in Masr Al-Qadima. In 2012, police raided Ezbet Abu Qarn, another slum area in Masr Al-Qadima, to arrest drug-dealers. Hundreds of men inside the district used shotguns and pistols to fight the security forces. Hamoksha's real name is Mahmoud Mustafa, but his friends call him Hamoksha as he used to work as an assistant to a car mechanic when he was young. He did not have a formal education as he left school to work in order to help his family. Now Hamoksha is married and has two children in the area along with his married sister and her three kids. NEGATIVE EFFECTS: A study published last year by Cairo University's Faculty of Economics and Political Science concluded that the informal housing areas were having negative impacts on Egyptian society, which had developed isolated communities sometimes full of dangerous and unhealthy behaviours. According to the study, these behaviours “threaten the pattern of long-lasting families and society as whole,” and they include disrespect for privacy, the violation of other people's rights, the spread of organised robbery, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, violence and adultery. “The government has ignored the problem for decades, and now we have generations of people who were born, lived, and married in the same slum areas and are in the same level of poverty,” Noura Wahba, a public policy researcher at the American University in Cairo, said. Wahba said that the government should start immediate intervention programmes to educate children in slum areas, as these could help stop the spread of poverty in the coming generations. “Fighting poverty is strongly related to solving the slum areas problem,” she pointed out. Wahba was referring to types of intervention like Conditional Cash Transfer programmes in which the government or donor gives money to a group of poor families to send their children to school. The aim of such programmes is to decrease illiteracy and prevent the inter-generational transmission of poverty by giving families cash incentives to adopt responsible behaviour. On the economic level, the slums depend on jobs that are sometimes described as marginal, such as the fruit and vegetables trade, or, for women, various forms of domestic service. Furthermore, child labour is widespread in these areas, and it is correlated with their maltreatment and the infringement of their rights. Slum residents have taken over state-owned land illegally to occupy them. This is the case in Ezbet Khairallah, another slum area in the Dar al-Salam district, where Ashraf Mahmoud Karam, 32, has a small kiosk that sells sweets and cigarettes. He immigrated from Fayoum to Cairo seven years ago after finishing his military service. “I worked in the beginning in the construction industry, but then I was injured and the doctors told me that I would not be able to work again,” he said. Karam encouraged his five brothers to come to Cairo, and they ended up living in one room on the roof of a two-storey apartment building. “Our wives and kids are still in Fayoum. We cannot bring them here due to the limited space,” said Karam's youngest brother Ahmed, 22, who works for a grocery. He added that his income did not exceed LE700 per month and that he had two young daughters to support. FAILED POLICIES: For most experts interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly, it is tough to answer the question of how a problem that the government has ignored for the last three decades can be addressed. “In the light of the lack of the rule of law, systematic corruption, and the absence of political will, the slum areas problem will only increase,” Wahba said. In 1996, two decrees were published that stipulated that any new building on agriculture land and any urban construction without a permit would be severely punished by the military courts. Almost 20 years later, thousands of people have built their homes on agricultural land and the government has done almost nothing to stop them. The administrative courts have generally ruled in favour of the residents in matters of forced eviction and resettlement. This has also led to a massive expansion of informal settlement building. Although the government has spent at least the last two decades attempting to ignore or resist the expansion of these areas, the formal expansion of the city has all but stopped, whereas the informal areas look as if they will continue to grow at a sustained rate for years to come. “Egyptians outside these areas as well as the authorities continue to misunderstand informality, not realising that these areas have potential or that this may be an opportune moment to invest in them rather than losing the battle to eliminate them,” Wahba said. Wahba's expectations that the slum areas will increase agree with the French Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies estimates, which indicated in a study published this year that the slums were increasing in Egypt at an annual rate of 3.4 per cent. For Safaa Marafi, a sociologist, the way forward should be to start with research projects that focus on the people living in the slums in order to understand their needs, priorities and expectations. “It is not only about providing them with a new home. Understanding their culture, needs and way of life is essential to helping provide them with the necessary resources they need, whether proper education, jobs, or medical assistance.” Despite the deficiencies in the national budget to cover development and the unsatisfactory role played by state bodies in curbing the slums, the government has nevertheless tried to attract national and international funds to finance slum development. In 2011, a project called the Billion Dollar Campaign to Develop Slums was launched by actor Mohamed Sobhi. The project was supported by well-known public figures, such as television preacher Amr Khaled, actress Hanan Tork, businessman Niazi Sallam, as well as journalists and non-governmental organisations. The campaign was able to collect LE110 million from Egyptians living in Egypt, as well as from Egyptians living abroad. In addition, the army has declared its willingness to donate LE50 million to help build 600,000 housing units in six months for people living in slums. Part of the project will be to give workers living in slums the chance to contribute to building their own homes, which should help open new job opportunities for slum inhabitants, as well as create a sense of belonging towards their new homes. After consultation with the Slums Development Authority, the project is scheduled to take place in 33 slum areas in locations in Cairo, Suez, Alexandria, Minya and Port Said. The residents will not own the houses, to avoid the problem of re-selling the homes, but they will be guaranteed the right to live in the units. In addition, the state is developing a public-private partnership to help solve the problem through cooperation with the private sector, NGOs and volunteers. The government made a gesture when Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi announced a project in November to develop the slums areas of Cairo and Giza in which at least five ministries will participate. Moreover, the Committee of Fifty charged with drafting the country's new constitution has added an article committing the state to a national plan to deal with the problem of slums, including providing basic facilities, improving the quality of life and public health, and providing the necessary resources for implementing the plan within a specific period. Mansheyet Nasser THE SQUATTER settlement of Mansheyet Nasser has the most extreme concentration of poverty of any urban area in Egypt. Commonly known as Garbage City, it is one of Cairo's largest informal settlements. The area, in the foothills of the Muqattam hills in eastern Cairo, has been developed since the late 1950s and early 60s by rural migrants from Upper Egypt. Since then, more and more impoverished people have been driven out of central Cairo into districts such as Mansheyet Nasser in the wake of rapid urbanisation. Today, Mansheyet Nasser is home to between 800,000 and one million people.
Ezbet Khairallah EZBET Khairallah is one of the largest unplanned communities in Egypt, with a population close to 650,000. The area covers about 12 square km (480 feddans) on a rocky plateau in the southern part of Cairo. It lies between Masr Al-Qadima to the north, Dar Al-Salam to the south, the Nile to the west and Al-Basateen to the east. The population of Ezbet Khairallah is approximately 650,000, 45 per cent of them men and 55 per cent women. There are 775 mostly unpaved roads, 12,000 shops and 23 registered NGOs. Most of the residents are labourers. Workshops that provide employment include ironmongers, carpentry shops, metal works, and upholstery and glass-blowing workshops. Many of the residents earn minimal wages that barely support their families. Although Ezbet Khairallah is located within the boundaries of Cairo, most basic services are missing, including water, sewage and electricity. Ezbet Al-Haggana HOME to an estimated 500,000 people living on about 750 acres of land, Ezbet Al-Haggana is one of the largest informal settlements in the country. The area, formerly military land and formally classified as underdeveloped, faces problems that are common to other such areas of Cairo, among them shortfalls in essential services such as water, sewage and rubbish collection and grossly inadequate healthcare, education and security. Ezbet Al-Haggana lies some 4.5km outside Cairo on the Suez Road. The area took the name of Al-Haggana as it was formerly a settlement for the families of coastguard soldiers stationed nearby. Before 1963, Ezbet Al-Haggana was a military zone, and part of the area was dedicated to soldiers and their families who were originally from the governorates of Upper Egypt and Sudan. These began to expand the area and build new houses for their relatives in return for symbolic prices. They then started to sell land in the area to others. As a result, older Al-Haggana residents were able to rebuild their houses in brick, leading to a change in the character of the area. Officially, it was a suburb of Heliopolis until 1963, later being attached to Nasr City. Ezbet Al-Haggana consists of four areas. The first is the original area in which the soldiers first settled, followed by their relatives, sons and grandchildren. This is the only area that enjoys basic services like water, sewage, electricity, and transportation. The second, third and fourth areas have few or no basic services and informal streets that are only one or two metres wide in some places. Slum areas in Egypt THERE are three types of slum areas in Cairo: - The most common type consists of the informal settlements built on private land that was formerly used for agricultural purposes. Examples of this type include Imbaba, Boulaq Al-Dakrour, Al-Basateen, and Warraq Al-Hadir. - The second type consists of informal settlements built on desert lands owned by the state. These include private residences informally built on vacant state-owned desert land without construction permits. They comprise areas such as Ezbet Al-Haggana and Mansheyet Nasser. - The third type corresponds to parts of Cairo where the buildings have deteriorated over the years due to a lack of maintenance. Examples of these areas include Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, Al-Gammaliya, parts of Masr Al-Qadima, Al-Khalifa, and Boulaq Abul-Ela. Slum areas in the three main governorates - ALMOST 16 million Egyptians live in the country's 1,221 slums, 281 of which are qualified as “indecent areas.” - In Cairo, about 63 per cent of the population lives in 81 informal areas, 36 of them ranked as dangerous. - In Giza, there are 32 slum areas, and there are 41 in Alexandria.
