Various issues engaged the press this week including the start of the new academic year. Sherif Abdin chose to focus on an issue of prime concern to all those working in the press at present: what is the fate of press institutions which are facing a real crisis? The institutions, Abdin wrote in the daily Al-Ahram, carried the flame of enlightenment and culture for years in Egypt and the surrounding region, making them a valuable treasure for the Egyptian state. But, Abdin wrote, things have changed to the extent that the question now is not how these institutions will disappear but when. Although the mechanism by which the state will deal with the crisis of these institutions is not clear, “I do not nurse the least doubt that the state will make the necessary changes that would help them regain their influence and protect the people working in them. Building the modern democratic state cannot withstand the luxury of giving up the printed press,” he wrote. Karim Abdel-Salam noted that social media has recently become a platform for the moaning of many parents about the price of school fees, equipment and uniforms. That is why Abdel-Salam hailed the 'Welcome School' fair that provides needed school equipment with reduced prices to ease the burden on parents. However, he pointed to two needed steps in his regular column in Al-Youm Al-Sabei: taking the necessary measures to stop retailers from buying the equipment so that they can resell them in their shops for the full price. Second, tightening control over schools to stop them from forcing parents to buy school equipment and uniforms from certain shops. “Although the Ministry of Education banned schools from forcing parents to buy uniforms from a specific place, schools tend to ignore that decision, just as they ignore abiding by raises in yearly tuition fees in schools which come up with different occasions and excuses to take more money from the parents during the year,” he wrote. Mahmoud Khalil pointed to the recent announcement by Minister of Finance Mohamed Mait that Egypt's debt had reached LE2,500 billion and that the government will implement a new strategy to reduce the debt. However, Khalil said, up till not, no one knows the details of the strategy and whether it will depend on taxes to create more resources to cover expenses. "This is not the first time Mait talks about the debt and the magnitude of the crisis we are in. People understand but they want to hear about solutions, especially in the long term," he wrote in the daily Al-Watan. Khalil said he believed it was only fair that the government should leave the simple citizen alone, one who has been burdened by several economic measures in the last few years, and head instead to the parallel economy in the coming months to try to force it to bow to the present taxing umbrella. 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Banned groups By Amr Selim, Al-Masry Al-Youm
