Is Sisi reaping $ 11 billion in construction violations in the Mubarak era?

Jihan Shalhoub - Cairo

"Those who want to legalize his offenses will come with the money bags." Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in June 2017, reviewing the results of his campaign to remove land violations and building violations with a celebration attended by all the governors of the republic.

During the ceremony, the giant screens moved the bulldozers onto the buildings, turning them in minutes into scattered stones and a cloud of dust, in a letter to those whose buildings had been demolished for the "cash bags".

A year and a half later, the idea of ​​the Sisi will come to light when the parliament approves the law of "reconciliation in building violations" submitted by the government in order to regulate the procedures of legalizing the infringing buildings in return for payment of fines.

Two billion pounds (about $ 11 billion) may be a huge expectation of the amount of fines expected to be carried by the bags of violators of the state treasury, but the amount - estimated by housing experts - seems reasonable considering the scale of building violations that grew under the corruption of local governments under ousted President Hosni Mubarak, And consulted in the years of security chaos that followed the overthrow of his rule.

The law justified the issuance of the law of "reconciliation" can not fix the violations of his predecessors, which amounted to impossible to implement the decisions of the removal, stressing that reconciliation will revive the public treasury of the state.

Bulk violations
Half of the real estate units in Egypt will be subject to the law of reconciliation of building violations, as confirmed by Engineer Alaa Wali, head of the Housing Committee in parliament earlier.

Wali pointed out that the new law requires the owners of these units to pay fines according to the area of ​​each property, except for the government agencies exempted from the law of paying fines and gave the violations of their buildings exceptional regulation.

Government statistics reveal that 2.8 million properties are completely in violation of the construction requirements, of which 380,000 were built without permits, while the number of infringing floors in other buildings was 396,000 and 87 floors, with total building violations approaching 20 million violations in 40 million real estate units.

Alexandria topped the list of provinces, while Giza and Cairo ranked second and third respectively.

The previous statistics do not include the violations of agricultural land, which allowed the new law to enter the adjacent areas of the residential blocs within the scope of reconciliation, based on the latest aerial photography.

This requires the government to adopt new maps of the urban area of ​​each area, so that the new law does not violate Article 29 of the Constitution, which obligates the state to protect the agricultural land and work to increase it and criminalize the attack on it.

a ban
The new law forbids the completion of real estate reconciliations built by expropriation of state-owned land, as well as five other instances of buildings that violate construction safety, are placed on land subject to the antiquities protection law, or have a distinctive architectural style, Civil society.

The legislators' keenness to evaluate them according to the urban and cultural level and the availability of services in the different regions was the main issue in which the differences were raised in the parliamentary housing committee during the discussion of the new law, due to the large diversity of the nature of the violations and the difference in the market value of the buildings.

This is what was decided by the law to return to the decision of the Minister of Housing No. 214 of 2017, which set the value of the flat construction cost of eight hundred pounds for the buildings located in the range of Cairo, Giza, Alexandria and the investment zone in the city of October 6, 500 pounds for the buildings located in the cities and centers of the rest of the provinces and 200 pounds for the buildings located in the villages.

Fears
The reconciliation law did not refer to several details that raised questions and concerns, leaving the clarification of its executive regulations - which will be issued within one month from the date of its implementation - its articles 12 provided only the procedures for organizing the application of the rationing committees and how to collect fines without addressing the consequences of such regulation Which the law will grant to infringing properties.

The most prominent of these questions are: Do infringing buildings threaten public rights because of pressure on utility facilities, resulting in frequent explosions of sewer lines, poor water pressure, and excessive overload of electricity grids? What is the fate of the whole neighborhoods, which were based on random bases and are a chronic problem because of the lack of government services?

The most prominent question remains among the citizens: Why does the state impose a fine on citizens who bought apartments in residential buildings that later proved to be illegal? What if the apartment paid the fine and others refused on the same floor to pay the fine? Will the residential building be completely destroyed?