I am not filing this complaint against Sharkia Governor. I know most governors are distracted from people's matters and worries by more important things that we, with our limited minds, cannot understand. I am not filing it against the local development minister – the head of governors – as I know he cannot control governors' decisions and cannot force them to take one. I am not filing it to the prime minister, either, as he usually suffers when he just takes a look at Egypt and realizes that, in addition to his very Smart Village, there are thousands of other villages which are not smart at all. I am indeed filing it to God the Almighty, hoping He may inspire a major official and prompt him to decide to dissolve the authority responsible for state-owned properties and scatter its employees among dozens of other authorities. This authority slept for dozens of years until he finally woke up some years ago and spread terror and chaos among poor Egyptians. Yet, it is now turning into a kind of ostriches when it faces major officials who have put their hands on millions of meters of public lands. There is almost no village in Egypt which has not become smart now. Thousands of their inhabitants, though, are spending their life going back and forth among the many different authorities in the governorates and in the capital in a heroic attempt to defend all that is left to them: "their houses, where they have been living for decades and indeed centuries". "This is all that's left to us: four run-down walls with thousands of people suffering from Cirrhosis or renal failure because they have been drinking sewage water mixed with water courses", says Atef el-Tahawi, an engineer who lives in Sharkia Governorate. He says: "We accepted the government's decision to cook 20,000 loaves of bread a day for 70,000 people in the two villages I am from. We accepted the collapse of our homes and the terrible diseases destroying our lives. Now, here we are, just demanding to re-buy our homes from this authority, which has estimated them at LE 100 per square meter and cuts electricity and water in the households of those who do not pay."
Mr. Atef invites me to visit the two villages and look at the inhuman collapse of services, taste the unbearable water and have a look at the economic conditions of thousands of people worn out by the search for some drugs in public hospitals. Some of them ended up selling all they could sell to buy medicines in pharmacies. Now, none of them can afford to buy back their houses, which were built by their ancestors some 300 years ago, for LE 100 a meter. LE 100 a meter, Mr. Governor and Counselor? How come? Law 31/1984, signed by President Hosni Mubarak on March 27, 1984, sets forth that lands shall be owned by those who occupy them provided they pay LE 1 a meter, until a committee sets a final estimate of the land price. Some years ago, most competent committees estimated the price of lands built in stable housing blocks at LE 10 per meter. It may just be a chance, but those who benefited the most by this kind estimate were only the rich and those who occupied these lands. As for the poor, none of them was able to obtain formularies on such form of occupation. All of a sudden, the monster dwelling in this authority woke up and issued its tough instructions – backed by the governor – to cut water and electricity in the houses of widows, the ill and the poor and to besiege them so that they pay LE 100 a meter. Oh Lord, spare our relatives the Smart Village or, for once, spare them our poor in the villages, where no more tombs can be dug in state-owned cemeteries filled with corruption.
