Madinat Al-Salam residents have been sleeping in tents after they were evicted from their homes. (Daily News Egypt Photo / By Heba Fahmy)
| By Heba Fahmy / Daily News Egypt | June 12, 2011, 8:13 pm |
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Despite staying only a few meters away from a children’s playground and air conditioned offices belonging to a youth center in Sbiko area, this tent city is worlds apart from the center’s luxury with sewage water running through the tents and the stench of garbage infiltrating the air.
The residents of the camp can only look through the gate that separates them from the decent living they long for.
“I just want four walls to protect me and my children,” Warda, 26, said carrying her paralyzed daughter. “Is that too much to ask?”
“Dogs with scabies live better than we do,” Walaa Saeid, 25, told Daily News Egypt.
Mother of five, Sabah Abdel Moula, said her eight-month-old daughter Shahd died in the camp.
“Some people said she died from dehydration because of the heat inside the tents, others said she was stung by a snake or a scorpion,” Abdel Moula said.
Imam Badr, 32, broke down in tears in front of his family saying, “I’d rather be shot dead than be incapable of providing for my children and giving them a roof over their heads.”
One of the protesters’ at Maspero, Tamer Mahmoud, 33, drowned while he was bathing in the Nile River on Saturday. Mahmoud left behind a pregnant wife and a four-year-old daughter.
“My son died so he could get [a roof over his head],” Mahmoud’s mother, Sabah Suleiman told DNE.
Government action
The protesters had closed the road leading to Maspero on Thursday in a bid to pressure the government to meet their demands.
On Thursday, their names were taken by security officials who promised to provide them with housing, after which they decided to open the road for traffic.
Protesters were told that a committee would visit them on Sunday to fulfill that promise, however, no committee had showed up by press time.
The residents say they were forcibly evicted from their apartments in Al-Nahda area in Madinat Al-Salam, following the January 25 Revolution.
They said that reports on thugs taking over apartments in the area scared the landlords who decided to take preemptive measures and evict them.
Others couldn’t afford to pay the rent after their daily wages were cut, after the economic slump that followed the revolution.
“Although my [apartment] contract wasn’t over yet, the landlord and his relatives attacked my husband with a knife and forced us to leave the apartment,” Warda said.
“There were no police forces or police stations working at the time, so we couldn’t resort to the law to get our apartment back,” Badr said.
Most of the residents are construction workers or microbus drivers whose daily wages were deeply affected by the revolution.
“My husband used to work with a famous architect as a construction worker,” Saeid said. “Now we can barely make ends meet.”
“My husband was a taxi driver, but the car was attacked during the revolution and he was fired,” Amal Abdel Halim, 36, said. “Now we have nothing.”
The residents were first transferred to a camp in Al-Nahda area in February. The former government headed by Ahmed Shafiq promised to give them apartments within one month.
In March, Shafiq resigned and Essam Sharaf was appointed as the new prime minister. The residents then held a 10-day sit in-front of the Cabinet reiterating their demands.
Sharaf transferred them to the camp in Sbiko area, and promised to give apartments to those who direly needed them within one month.
Six committees conducted field research on the camp’s residents to verify whether they were eligible for government apartments or not, according to Cairo governor Abdel Qawi Khalifa.
Khalifa said last Tuesday that 126 cases out of 1,033 cases proved eligible for receiving government housing.
However, camp residents claim that only around 10 families received housing, while the other 116 cases included names that they had never heard of.
“These people who received government housing weren’t camping here with us,” Warda said. “Where did they come from?” Read the rest on:
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