The Population report 2007 looks into slum life and in the "new cities" of Egypt Ezbet El-Haggana is one of Cairo's largest urban slums. Feryal El-Sayed has called a tiny square room crammed with a bed and two seats, and a tinier cubicle containing a kitchen and a bathroom, "home" for the past 15 years. The makeshift roof is falling apart, and Ms El-Sayed, 62, had to install plastic sheeting under the ceiling to catch the debris. However, she is still better off than some of her neighbours in Ezbet El-Haggana's District Three, who have no roofs over their heads and who, on rainy nights, are forced to sleep under their beds. Ezbet El-Haggana, a sprawling slum in the northeast of Cairo, is one of the largest urban ashwaiiyat, or "informal areas", encircling this city. With more than a million inhabitants, it is among the few places where the poorest of Egypt's poor can afford some sort of housing -- a place where high-voltage cables hum constantly over their heads, sewage water seeps under their feet and the fumes of burning garbage fill their lungs. "In addition to all sorts of diseases, we always have fires in these houses because of the high-voltage cables," says Hazem Hassan, of the Al-Shehab Institution for Comprehensive Development, a grass-roots organisation that has been assisting the residents of Ezbet El-Haggana since 2001. Al-Shehab will soon construct new roofs for 50 of the most threatened dwellings in the district, including Ms El-Sayed's. Cairo's population has exploded during the last three decades, doubling from 6.4 million people in 1975 to 11.1 million in 2005. The latest statistics of the Egyptian Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities show that there are 1,221 "informal areas" similar to Ezbet El-Haggana in Egypt. They house 12-15 million of the country's 77 million people. Sixty-seven of these are in Greater Cairo. The Ministry has been diverting the flow of people from Egypt's big cities through development projects and low- cost housing in "new cities". Those in the Cairo area alone have absorbed 1.2 million people who would otherwise have ended up living in ashwaiiyat. However, despite government incentives, many still cannot afford to move to these new cities. People like Ms El-Sayed are sticking to Ezbet El-Haggana. Despite her predicament, she remains optimistic, perhaps because she realises that she is more fortunate than many of her neighbours -- and that a new roof is on its way.
