CAIRO - A report lying on the desk of Minister of Electricity Hassan Younis confirms that electricity has been supplied to 30,000 illegally built homes in slums on the outskirts of Greater Cairo (Cairo and parts of Giza and el-Qaliubiya governorates) since last month. The report adds that there are plans to link another 80,000 such homes in Greater Cairo to the power grid. The report, compiled by the Chairman of the Egyptian Holding Company for Electricity and others, stresses that the idea is to help improve the living standards and conditions of the inhabitants of these grotesque slums, which have been springing all over the country. In the meantime, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has revealed plans to build low-cost housing units costing hundreds of millions of Egyptian pounds in new residential areas and moving the slum dwellers there. Apparently apologising to these inhabitants for their decades-long marginalisation under the regime of Hosni Mubarak, the Premier has pledged to give top priority to the welfare of these unfortunate citizens. But the report lying on the minister's desk does seem curious. There appears to be a lack of communication between Sharaf's ministers. Why else would the Sharaf Government pay a lot of money to supply slums with electricity, when the plan is to demolish them and move their inhabitants to new housing units, which will also cost a lot of money? Is the Minister of Electricity unaware of Sharaf's rehabilitation plan for the slum dwellers? If he isn't unaware, why is he eager to squander a huge portion of his ministry's budget on upgrading areas that are doomed to be demolished? If the Minister of Electricity does not know about Sharaf's plan, the Government is presumably wasting the big loans it has received from foreign donors and financial institutions on randomly suggested development projects.
