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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters 'Transferred to a cemetery'
By Mariz TadrosThe bulldozers arrived Saturday morning behind St Barbara's Cemetery in Old Cairo. Their target: 36 cement and stone workshops lining the street. The area is now broken walls, rocks and dust.
These workshops used to produce the raw materials for tiles, mosaics and construction. The Cairo governorate has decided to move them to a mountainous area at Shak Al-Tho'ban, near the southern Cairo suburb of Helwan. Adel Ismail, secretary-general for the Old Cairo district, said earlier in the week that this was part of the governor's plan to develop the area surrounding Amr Ibn Al-As Mosque and the Coptic churches and remove all activities producing environmental pollution. After moving all polluting workshops to the outskirts of the city, the area will be revamped, streets will be paved and lighting installed, transforming the area into a tourist site.
Ismail said that for the owners of workshops that have to relocate -- because they are on illegally occupied government land -- the state has provided alternative land at a reduced price in the allocated area, where infrastructure will soon be completed. And it is not just them that will go; potters and sackcloth makers will also have to move.
Their removal will be gradual and in stages. Nasser Nageh, whose workshop was demolished last Saturday, said they were given a warning about a month ago that the workshops would be pulled down, but they were not given an exact date. Since then, his business -- which has been in operation for more than 20 years -- has been frozen. "The work has totally stopped. We have moved our machinery to the new site, 15 kilometres from here, but there is no way we can work there because there is no electricity, no water, no sewerage system, nothing. We have had to let the 15 workers go, nobody is prepared to go so far away. There is virtually no transport and whatever there is, is irregular and expensive because it is a mountainous area," he said. The land which the old workshop is on, insists Nageh, was not illegally occupied government land, but was legally bought and he still has the contract to prove it. It was the governorate which had initially moved them from the old potters' area to their current site many years ago, he said.
The situation is all the more complex because the owners of all the workshops that have been torn down have signed forms saying that they wished to be moved to the new area. "Many of the owners feared that in the end their premises would be torn down anyway, without even getting an alternative site. I was one of the owners who refused to sign the form; the electricity was cut off from my workshop, we had to stop working," said Gamal Ibrahim Mohamed.
The problem, as many workshop owners explained, was that even if they built new workshops, bought the land (which is by no means cheap by their standards, a square metre being priced at LE150), installed electricity at their own expense, and connected water, there would be no guarantee that the work would pick up.
A young worker at the site of the razed workshops: will alternative land provide a better future? photo: Sherif Sonbol
"The problem is that the contractors who buy their materials from us are mostly based in downtown Cairo, Imbaba and Giza. They would never go up to that area near Helwan to buy their material. It's a desert area, so it's not worth it. Our reputation was based on the area here," said Mohamed, who has been in the business for 13 years.
Because not all the workshops have been relocated at the same time, the lucky ones, who have been notified of a later eviction, are making a fortune, thriving on the customers of the workshops that have had to go. "The price of material has increased by at least a third since the relocation plans have been known. I don't know how long they can keep this up," Mohamed said. "Many owners insist that if they really had to be relocated, then perhaps it should have been done collectively as at least that would have forced the customers to go to the new area out of necessity."
Others disagree, questioning the very premise upon which the relocation plan is established. One said: "The governor passes here every Friday. We have spoken extensively with him. We told him that if he is concerned with the pollution, then we can build filters; if he wants to turn the area into a tourist site for the millennium celebrations, we can convert our workshops into bazaars and keep the material at the back; we even suggested to him that we build an elegant fence around the area where the activities are. But nobody listened. We sent an official complaint, but we have not received a reply. Many of us have the feeling that this land will not be used for public gardens as is claimed, but will be sold for very high prices."
Mohamed Ahmed, who owns one of the workshops in the area, believes the worst hit will be the workers, mostly day labourers who come from Upper Egypt and, being illiterate and with limited skills, they rely on this kind of work for a living for themselves and their families. "I just don't understand it. On the one hand the government is talking about the importance of generating employment and the growth of the small-enterprise sector, and on the other it is thwarting our work," said one confused workshop owner. His workshop was one of those torn down earlier this week. He believes that hundreds of workers will be laid off by this relocation. "It is like being transferred to a cemetery; there is no life there. We are heart-broken, but what can we do?" lamented Ahmed.
