CAIRO - The Cairo metro transports an average of two million commuters per day, but it is gradually losing the respectable image it retained for almost a decade. The excessive presence of peddlers on trains and platforms has become quite annoying. Metro passengers are used to these vendors, but their numbers are growing since no one stops them from elbowing their way through the already crowded trains. Street vendors occupying the capital seem to be one of the problems resulting from a poor police presence in the wake of the January revolution. The metro, the backbone of transport in the capital, has not been spared. Cairenes complain that moving in the streets was becoming a daily problem owing to congested traffic and crowded pavements blocked by vendors who displayed all kinds of merchandise. In the rush hours when metro trains are completely packed, fights break out with peddlers whose persuasiveness is simply too irritating. The scorching summer heat makes passengers lose their temper, especially when peddlers insist on moving back and forth. The situation however comes to a head when peddlers start quarrelling, particularly when there is more than one in the same car. When Lamia Hassan, a middle-aged civil servant, complained to a station attendant, she received a surprising response. She understood that the metro administration was hamstrung in the absence of a co-operating police force. But she was told that the metro administration had indeed tried to chase the peddlers away, but the next day a bunch of them returned with thugs who created havoc and panic among passengers. So there was no choice but to leave the peddlers alone. “This mess is getting out of hand,” Hanaa Saeed, a regular metro passenger, told Al-Ahrar independent daily. “In the past a small number of women sold accessories in the women-only cars, but nowadays young men are seen in and out of trains, carrying clothes, toys, household items – you name it,” Saeed complained. The upheaval and noise created by these vendors are not the only cause for complaint; there is also the question about the quality of their wares. People are aware that there is no supervision whatsoever on the validity of items, especially food. The idea of picking household items up while riding home is quite appealing for working women, because it saves time and effort. Yet Soad Moustafa, who works in downtown Cairo and takes the metro on a daily basis, has reservations about the unprecedented chaos in streets and metro trains. The cheap prices seduce many passengers but the fact is, as Soad says, that many of the items are of questionable quality or origin. “Some items were stolen back in the early days of the January revolution when looting took place”, she told the paper. Today, she added, there was no trace of the police, which cracked down on roaming vendors before the revolution. Soad and thousands of other passengers regret that the metro has become a marketplace where the sound of bargaining and quarrelling is adding insult to injury.
