Mean streets

By Rehab Saad
Winter is here, and so is the rain -- along with the chaos that always accompanies a heavy downpour in the capital. Predictably, slum areas were most affected by the floods created when a rain storm erupted last week: their narrow roads, inhospitable at the best of times, became impassable, and local residents found themselves traipsing through thick mud. Elsewhere, traffic jams were even more extensive and frustrating than they normally are during the rush hour. Both the above-ground and underground train networks were brought to a halt. Road cleaners stood in groups surveying the scene with expressions of hopelessness and disbelief, while employees of the Sanitary Sewage Authority attempted to unclog sewers billowing out their filth.
The situation was worse in some other governorates, which suffered power cuts for days.
Officials issued statements to the effect that Egypt was on its way to establishing a network of sewers to absorb such rain water. However, for most people, this simply did not wash.
Cairo governorate officials believe that the capital is not really in need of a drainage network, but rather more of their preferred giant water-syphoning trucks. Cairo's climate is relatively dry, they argue, so why change everything for the sake of a few days of rain?
"The establishment of a rain drainage network is very costly, especially since we do not have rain every year. We would in effect be spending billions of pounds for one day every other year," said Mohamed Said, head of the Sanitary Sewage Authority.
Said told Al-Ahram Weekly that a few years ago, Kamal El-Ganzouri, then prime minister, was returning to Cairo from a foreign trip and was caught in the traffic along the airport road on a rainy day.
"He reacted by ordering the establishment of a drainage network all along Salah Salem and the airport roads. For two years, we did not make use of this network. It cost us LE125 million, and we used it for one day only -- last week," he reflected. "Even a car accident can have a worse effect on the traffic situation," he added.
Said went on to explain that his authority's role is to establish sewers for sewage water only, whereas sewers for draining rain water are the responsibility of the Roads Authority, municipal councils and the General Authority for the Cleanliness and Beautification of Cairo.
"However, when it rains we provide assistance to other authorities in unclogging drains and we also open up more sewers," he said.
According to Said, Cairo has 6,128 rain sewers and 300,000 sewers for sewage.
"The rain sewers are insufficient to absorb rain water and many of the other sewers are clogged by the dust or by asphalt used to pave roads. Our problem is one of discipline. We spend millions of pounds on these sewers and on unclogging them and then people throw things in them or those who pave the roads cover them up with asphalt," he argued.
"There are two plans to deal with the rain problem," Hassan Kazem, head of the central operations department in the Cairo governorate, told the Weekly. "We have established a committee that includes officials from the governorate as well as from the authorities of roads, sanitary sewage and cleanliness, which regularly checks the sewers," he explained. "As for the long-term, we have decided that we will not pave any road, whether old or new, that does not have sewers," Kazem added.
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