Picking up her nephew from the airport on his recent visit to Cairo, Riham Adel is forced to seek answers to the problem of the country's roads The streets of Cairo were not like they usually are. Everything was quiet, and the fresh air softly pricked the skin. It was almost 5am, and I was driving to the airport to pick up my sister and her children after three years of not having seen each other. After we had exchanged hugs, my sister went home with our father while I took her three- year-old son, Yassin, my nephew, with me in my car. He almost choked when I told him to sit next to me. "I'm not allowed to sit in the front," he said, jumping into the back and searching for the seatbelt. A stream of apparently endless questions followed as we were driving home. This was Yassin's first visit to Egypt. "What's that noise? Where does it come from," Yassin asked. "Road- bumps, dear," I replied with a smile. "Wow, donkey in the street! Are they allowed to be out of the zoo?" This time I had no answer. After countless road- bumps and holes in the road of different depths and sizes, the car going up and down continually, Yassin was almost beside himself with confusion. "Why are the streets so bad in Egypt?" I tried to find an answer, but couldn't. The question is a real one, and it reminded me of a phone call I had received from the garage some time before, telling me that it had been eight months since I had last taken the car in. I started to think about answers to my nephew's questions about the pitfalls of driving in Egypt. Egypt, it turns out, produces few civil engineers a year, who between them are responsible for all the country's roads and bridges. Moreover, there are also other issues that lead to the poor state of the country's roads. "The cost of paving roads is very high, and the government's budget is limited. As a result, the authorities do not always meet the technical specifications that guarantee long-term quality," said Sherif El-Sharqawi, a civil engineer specialised in roads and bridges and working as a consultant in Cairo. Limited funds explain the poor state of the roads, El-Sharqawi said in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, with a vicious circle starting even as early as the awarding of tenders. "Even if we assume that the companies applying for government tenders finish their work on time, something which actually rarely happens, there is still the need to ensure that the work done meets the specifications." What can happen, El-Sharqawi said, is that due to time factors and pressing delivery dates companies sometimes cut corners and then reduce the amount billed to the authorities. The result is more broken roads and several outstanding questions. "I have to say that we also don't set very precise specifications for road- building projects in Egypt," El-Sharqawi said. "The more rigorous the specifications, the more expensive the project. All this naturally leads to a further explanation for the poor state of Egypt's roads: maintenance." A familiar phrase crossed my mind -- "when the time comes, God will solve the problem." Proper maintenance of the country's infrastructure is still in its infancy in Egypt, and El-Sharqawi said that road maintenance was rarely carried out on a properly periodical basis. "In a crisis, we tend to resort to 'emergency maintenance' work, meaning that instead of maintaining roads on a periodical basis as they do in other countries, we only fix them when some potentially catastrophic problem occurs." "I did my Masters degree on the damage caused by lorries to roads, and here one can see part of the problem. Sometimes, these lorries are as much as three times heavier than they should be for the roads they are using, but their owners would rather pay a fine for this excess weight, billed at only LE10 for each extra ton, than follow the regulations in the first place. Even with the fines, this form of transportation is still cheaper than any other," El-Sharqawi said. "However, the real problem is that these lorries cause problems for the country's infrastructure, and the fines levied for excess weight do not go anywhere near paying for them." The deputy head of the New Cairo City authority responsible for such issues in Cairo, engineer El-Sayed El-Sabbagh, did not agree with much of what El-Sharqawi had to say, claiming that "we exert maximum efforts to avoid problems with the city's roads. I never allow the utility companies to dig up the roads unless they have gained the proper permits and then only in emergencies, for example," El-Sabbagh said in an interview with the Weekly. El-Sabbagh said that many parties share responsibility for the city's roads, and not all problems can be laid at the door of the authorities. "What if there are problems with the city's sewage system, or if gas or water pipes need to be repaired? These kinds of things all call for digging up the roads." In recent projects, El-Sabbagh explained, tendering procedures had followed established rules, such that final paving could only take place once utility services had been laid, and standards were maintained by having the contractor submit samples of all materials to be used in advance, these then being tested according to proper procedures. Only if the contractor is able to meet such standards is work authorised to begin. "Samples of the asphalt layer are also tested during and after the paving process, with specialists from the country's faculties of engineering and outside consultants being asked to serve on the assessment panels," El-Sabbagh said. What about the road-bumps my nephew had complained about? According to the regulations, these should be built to specified standards and painted with reflective paint. They should also be properly signalled: many of us, no doubt, have received a nasty shock going over an unsignalled or poorly signalled bump, something which can also have a nasty effect on one's car. According to an Egyptian proverb, one man's catastrophe is another man's good fortune, however, and Osman Abdel-Rahman, a 50-year-old mechanic with 32 years experience of car repairs, claims that every car that comes to his garage has damage to the chassis of one kind or another. "If Egypt's roads were better, we would have less work," Abdel-Rahman commented. "I repair the chassis of around 60 cars a month alone." Serious problems in the country's roads can turn a car over if hit from the wrong angle or at speed, or tyres can come off. "In my neighbourhood, a telephone company once dug up the roads to install new phone lines, and then just left leaving great holes in the road," Abdel-Rahman said. It seems that it is not just the government that must take responsibility for the poor state of the country's roads. Certain companies and individuals should also bear their part of the blame, particularly if they work on the country's infrastructure and then do not clear up afterwards. As Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, one of the companions of the Prophet Mohamed, said when he had responsibility for the early Islamic nation: "even if a mule trips over far away in Iraq, God will still ask me why".
