A delegation from Abu Dhabi is due to arrive to Cairo tomorrow at the beginning of the "Khalifa Bin Zayed City" project in New Cairo. The delegation will officially receive the land from the Ministry of Housing and Utilities on Monday. The project will be carried out by the UAE Emaar Company starting from next week. Housing Minister First Assistant Mohamed Damerdesh told Al-Masry Al-Youm that New Cairo, in cooperation with the Armed Forces, had prepared the 500,000-acre land – 16,000 apartments for an investment value of approximately LE 550 million – by removing 6 million m3 of wastes. He said the operation had cost some LE 50 million, entirely paid by the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA). He added the NUCA would connect the utilities at the borders of the city at its own expense within the framework of the integrated plan for the region, which already includes many real estate investment projects of foreign companies. This connection should not cause any disruption to the project. El-Damerdash added that the housing minister had responded to the many complaints from people living in the new cities and wishing to build a new floor on their buildings. The minister decided yesterday to keep the additional floor percentage as set in the specifications (25% of the total land price) provided that an annual 10% of the total land price is paid since the year when this land is allocated to the people. Some of the complainers, though, said the minister's response was insufficient, saying this annual 10% would very much exceed the price they had agreed to pay. They told Al-Masry Al-Youm that some of them had been given their lands at the beginning of the 1990s, which meant they would have to pay 200% of the total land price, adding that this did not take into account their interests. Al-Masry Al-Youm had published a report on the damages suffered by the residents of new cities due to the percentage set for the construction of additional floors on their buildings. Such percentage had been set through an open lottery, which ran counter to the conditions regarding the allocation of lands between people and NUCA.
