“It is the first time we have seen a president in Port Said, as we have been ignored by the government for years,” said Ayman Tageddin, a 45-year-old businessman in the city. Tageddin, who owns a clothing shop, said he viewed the visit by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to Port Said last week as a way of restoring the economy of the port city after its free economic zone was shut down in 2002 by former president Hosni Mubarak. Al-Sisi paid a visit to Port Said on 28 December to inaugurate a mega fish-farming project and open a new floating bridge over the Suez Canal that will link Port Said to the old city of Port Tawfik. The bridge will ease traffic by 75 per cent and reduce the cost of transportation between the two cities by 90 per cent. According to local leaders, the visit ends almost 20 years of government negligence of one the most important commercial ports in Egypt. The inauguration ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Defence Minister Sedki Sobhi and senior state officials. During his visit Al-Sisi also opened a new culture and arts centre that includes theatres and conference halls to increase tourism to the city. He announced that the government planned to encourage investors to build resorts in Port Said as the city had the potential to become a tourism destination for millions of Egyptians. At the inauguration ceremony, chairman of the Administrative Control Authority (ACA) Mohamed Erfan said the National Projects Committee formed by the ACA had reviewed 1,637 projects, of which 120 were waiting for the approval of the president. Al-Sisi has ordered the ACA to review all government projects in an effort to fight corruption in the public sector. The fish-farming project in the Suez Canal aims to produce fish in line with international standards, the ACA chairman said. These would help narrow the gap between production and consumption, which stands at 700,000 tons annually, by exporting additional fish. It would create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, he added. The project will establish 4,000 fish tanks in three stages, Erfan said. 1,029 tanks will be built in the first phase, and thus far 600 have been established. Al-Sisi visited one of the fish farms and helped workers put fish in boxes. In addition to the fish-farm project, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has announced a project to set up a fleet of 100 fishing boats. The goal is to develop the sector and upgrade the efficiency of the local fleet, securing hundreds of jobs. “A number of development projects are being implemented to serve the Egyptian people,” said Mohab Mameesh, board chairman of the SCA. “Feasibility studies have been conducted on a scientific basis,” he added. The SCA chairman said the projects would help rebuild the Egyptian economy using the most advanced technology, increasing production and creating more jobs for young people. “The Egyptian people are living through a difficult period due to an accumulation of problems that have not been addressed in the proper way. We need to live up to our responsibilities by easing the burden of the government for a better future,” Mameesh said. “Today's projects are 100 per cent Egyptian in design and implementation, and they are proof that Egyptians can overcome challenges when they work together,” he added. During his visit to Port Said, Al-Sisi called for the establishment of a museum documenting the valiant struggles of the governorate during various conflicts in Egypt's modern history. According to Port Said Governor Adel Al-Ghadban, the objective of the new museum will be to chronicle the struggles during the Tripartite Aggression by Israel, France, and Britain in 1956 during the Suez Crisis and the 1967 War with Israel. Residents of Port Said and the other cities of the Suez Canal have been praised for their popular resistance against the Tripartite Aggression in 1956 and the 1967 Six Day War with Israel, both of which led to massive displacement among city residents. “Port Said has shown huge resistance,” the president said. “But has this been properly documented? This is true not only of Port Said, but also of Ismailia and Suez. We want to document this resistance properly, as well as what Port Said went through between 1956 and 1967,” he added. Al-Sisi announced that by mid-2017 Port Said would be the first governorate in Egypt to have no informal housing areas. “I will not accept such areas in the Egyptian governorates,” Al-Sisi said. Al-Sisi's visit to Port Said is the first to be made by an Egyptian president since the 1990s. In 1999, a man was killed by the security services during a visit by former president Mubarak to the city. It had been thought that the man was carrying a knife to assault the president, but a subsequent investigation showed that he had approached the president in order simply to greet him. Following the incident, Mubarak largely neglected the city and decided to shut down its free economic zone in 2002. The move badly affected Port Said, which had lived for years on selling imported goods in the Egyptian market.
