Egypt charges Egyptians to walk along the Nile’s ‘walkway of the people’

In a new desperate attempt to find cash without taxing the military, Egypt’s govt is charging Egyptians 20 Egyptian pounds to walk on the newly built “Walkway of the Egyptian People” which runs along the Nile.

20 EGP is more than half what a third of Egyptians live on per day. https://t.co/Y5bFsgttlf

— Timothy E Kaldas (@tekaldas) July 18, 2022

In Egypt, roughly a third of Egyptians live below the poverty line at less than $1.45 a day and have struggled to survive amid the cost of living crisis.

Egypt opened the 4.7-kilometre two-level walkway in March this year in an effort to attract tourists. It offers a range of restaurants, entertainment and shops. It was built under the New Urban Community Authority (NUCA), a state institution which oversees the building of new towns in Egypt.

According to international think tank Carnegie, the NUCA works closely with military economic entities and is made up of retired army officers.

The NUCA oversaw the construction of the North Sea coast Marakiya and Marina resort tourism developments which have been criticised for being costly for the Egyptian economy.

READ: Egypt is going to crash. We must act now to limit the chaos

They have also constructed villages in the desert which remain largely uninhabited, according to Carnegie.

NUCA also oversaw the development of Warraq Island into glitzy high-rise apartments and a marina, which led to the forcible eviction of residents from their homes and the razing of their houses.

The Egyptian government has come under fire for building a series of vanity projects across Egypt at an eye watering cost that most ordinary Egyptians cannot afford.

In 2015 the Egyptian government approved a 28 billion Egyptian pound ($1.5 billion) budget for NUCA compared to the 500 million Egyptian pound ($26.4 million) budget it allocated to the Slum Development Fund.

One of the major vanity projects being built in Egypt is the New Administrative Capital to the east of Cairo which cost around $40 billion to build.

The cost of the average two-bedroom apartment would be around $50,000.

Critics say the money should have been spent on improving living conditions in other parts of the country.

As the poverty rate has risen in the country, critics have also written to the IMF board of directors to warn them that funds in Egypt are being misused for vanity projects.

The government has implemented a series of price hikes in fuel and food, predicted to rise even more as the country grapples with corruption, the global coronavirus pandemic and the Russian war on Ukraine.

In May President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi provoked fury online when he asked Egyptians to eat tree leaves just as the Prophet did, to save money.