In one month, Egypt recently witnessed 6 incidents of collapses of inhabited residential buildings, leaving victims in several governorates, a story that, despite its tragedy, has been repeated for decades, and no one stops in front of it except for as long as the scene takes.
But perhaps this situation should change, and someone should pay attention to the problem that only appears to be the tip of the iceberg, as the latest census reveals that 24% of Egypt's buildings need to be restored (more than 3 million buildings), and that about 98,<> inhabited buildings no longer work with restoration, but rather need to be evacuated and demolished, and we should not wait for all of them to fall on the heads of those in them.
The fall of buildings is the result of a combination of material deficit, imbalance of priorities, inaction of the responsible agencies, and corruption, which finds a fertile environment, as many old buildings are no longer able to maintain their owners, local agencies fail in their task of monitoring the condition of facilities and building violations, and some of their workers ignore these violations to achieve material interests, while the police competent to implement removal decisions are preoccupied with their task with other affairs.
The beginning of the phenomenon. Time and circumstances
This was not always the case in Egypt, and the phenomenon of the collapse of buildings began only in the sixties of the last century, and therefore reasons can be extrapolated, as homeowners in the royal era were more keen on the safety of the building to prolong its life, as renting the property was a feasible economic activity, and the condition of the property is one of the reasons for attracting suitable residents.
But things changed with the collapse of ownership and the establishment of the July 1952 system, where landlords were obliged to reduce the value of rents by 15%, and later raise them to 20%, and imposed a penalty of 3 months imprisonment on violators, and froze the rental value regardless of inflation rates, and allowed the lease contract to be inherited to the heirs of the tenant at the same rental value.
Real estate rental is no longer a rewarding economy, and the owner has lost most of his right to it, and the small amounts of rent - over time - are no longer sufficient to carry out periodic maintenance work, especially in light of the high prices of building materials, and for all this, the verse has been reversed, and some of them overlook the maintenance of the building in the hope of its collapse, and then finally get rid of the tenants and rebuild and sell it at high market prices.
As for tenants, most of them also do not have low incomes that allow them to carry out maintenance and renovation work, and often do not allow them to enter into a new rental relationship that imposes on them the current market rates.
In the midst of this complex scene, the engineering departments tasked with monitoring building violations suffer from two major problems: the first is corruption, which pushes some of their employees to keep silent about violations in exchange for bribes, and the second is the shortage of engineers, which pushes them to settle for apparent follow-ups.
Even when one of these engineering departments insists on removing a building because of its danger to the safety of those in it, the residents of the building themselves resort to the judiciary to appeal the decision, and lawyers ask experts to inspect time after time in a judicial path that takes a long time, and if the judiciary upholds the removal ruling, the problem begins to provide the necessary equipment for that, and the provision of police that protects workers and contractors from attacks by angry parents, and the police do not accept to protect workers until after conducting a security study of the repercussions of removal, a work that takes more months. What it decided in the end to implement and was confronted by the parents who do not have the expenses of moving to new homes, in most cases they only signed declarations that they bear full responsibility for the risks that may befall them.
Thus, we reach the penultimate scene of that dramatic story, as the residents of threatened buildings prefer to stay in them rather than the option of living in the streets, tents or non-human nests, as no one provides them with an alternative that suits their capabilities in most cases, and after that it remains only that the collapse occurs, so that those who die die, and those who have time to go live live.
And corruption has its mark
But the factors of time are not the only reason for the collapse, and the poor are not the only victims, there are many new buildings that fall on their owners who bought their units at high prices, and corruption here is the reason, many contractors violate the heights specified for the building, and add floors that its foundations cannot bear, or use adulterated building materials, or do not resort to engineering supervision to save expenses, and in all these cases bribery is the solution to keep the building and sell until it falls on those in it.
The memory of the Egyptian street is full of many cases of the latter type, most notably the Heliopolis Square building - in the Heliopolis neighborhood, which is inhabited by a mixture of the upper and upper middle class - it collapsed in 1992 on about 70 of its residents, and the building of the Nasr City neighborhood, which was among the victims 12 soldiers from the Civil Defense Forces, and the building of the Loran neighborhood in Alexandria in 2007 - with 14 floors - and killed 31 people, and many others in cities such as Mansoura and Damietta, and not without a year of several collapses of buildings Newly built, leaving dead and wounded.
The government's role towards dilapidated buildings remains the same for decades, as action only takes place after the incident occurs to remove rubble, extract victims, and disburse subsidies. This needs to be changed, as we can no longer apologize for ignorance. The database exists, and the danger is imminent
In 2007, the Ministry of Administrative Development tried to create a database on the condition of Egyptian buildings, which required an accurate inventory and inspection of each building in Egypt, but the ambitious project faltered after the exit of the minister who adopted it.
The second attempt to establish the database was in 2017, as the Central Bureau of Statistics added to the data of the population census that it implements every 10 years, exclusively the number, age and condition of establishments in Egypt, and thus there became for the first time a comprehensive picture that began by monitoring the number and condition of buildings erected before 1944 and then erected every 10 years following, and monitored the needs of restoration, and this is a major step in the right direction.
First census of buildings
The most prominent results were that in Egypt at the end of the population census for 2017 about 13 million and 445 thousand buildings, of which 3 million and 233 thousand need to be restored in its degrees (by 24% of the total buildings), and between this number there are about 428 thousand buildings that need major restoration, most notably in Sharkia Governorate, followed by the governorates of Sohag, Minya, Assiut and Beheira, and it seems clear how Upper Egypt occupies its place at the top of the list of dilapidated and dangerous real estate, thus adding to the high poverty rates that It is widespread among its inhabitants.
The census also revealed that the number of non-repairable buildings that must be demolished reaches 98,1 (about <>% of buildings in Egypt), and the map, condition and distribution of these buildings are now accurately known, and it remains only for the issue to occupy its place on the list of priorities.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attended the ceremony of announcing the census results, and after listening to a summary of its results, he pledged to address the housing problems that unfolded, but after 6 years nothing happened, although those who attended next to him from those responsible for this file are still in their positions, including the Minister of Planning, and the head of the Statistics Authority, who then assumed the position of Minister of Local Development and is primarily responsible for the file of the collapse of buildings.
In 2021, within the framework of digital transformation, the Ministry of Communications announced the "National Real Estate Number" project in cooperation with several ministries, most notably electricity, finance and local government, and the important project is based on the detailed database provided by the 2017 census, and seeks to provide detailed data on the chain of owners of each property and its architectural description, and it was decided to start from Port Said Governorate, which is less populated, but the stated purpose of the project was taxation, and aims to enhance government income from the real estate tax, which officials believe that its outcome is weak, That income has no role in dealing with the problem.
Even the Slums Development Fund, which was established under former President Hosni Mubarak in 2008, and whose tasks included the restoration of buildings that pose a threat to the lives of their residents, turned in 2021 from a service authority to a profit-oriented economic body, and after it was building houses for slum dwellers, it went to building for the middle class with areas of up to 179 meters.
The government's role towards dilapidated buildings is still the same as it has been for decades, as action does not happen until after the incident occurs, so civil defense agencies intervene to remove rubble, extract bodies and rescue the injured, and then states disburse social benefits to victims, this matter needs to change, and we can no longer apologize for ignorance, the database exists and the danger is imminent.