It seems that adding Maadi classy district, or that was classy, to Helwan district with its rebar plants and uncharted areas was a disaster. The new district officials are greedy and lazy. They failed to stop the encroachments upon the Maadi sidewalks (I had earlier written an article including a list of nearly one hundred encroachments). In addition, there are other abuses in more than one area in the Maadi neighborhood. The Maadi residents were stunned by colored lamps, like those that are used in weddings in slums, on the trees along the Corniche. These lamps are turned on from the sunset till the morning of the next day. They are put on trees from the building of the Supreme Constitutional Court till the end of Maadi. The other part, though, is still clean. Do you know why? Because it is still affiliated to Cairo and not Helwan!
At first, the Maadi residents thought that these lamps would be used for a single night because a restaurant would be opened in the ships anchored at the Corniche, but they discovered that they would be forever because the new governorate, Helwan, takes no action. If you went to the Helwan officials to solve this problem, you would find them busy fighting with each other over the revenues of the sidewalks they sold!
The other aggression on Maadi is the giant billboards that are put in the middle of the Corniche and the three entrances of Maadi. In all civilized countries, there are rules for the places that these ads are put, definitely not on the Nile Corniche, which is supposed to be a beautiful and clean place in the city. I call on the district officials to Paris to see what the French have done with the sidewalk overlooking the Seine River, or to London to see what the British have done with the banks of the River Thames in the Embankment district, which has the ancient Egyptian obelisk and not ugly advertisements that were randomly placed overnight!
These giant ads are another main source of income, like the sidewalks, for the district officials. They are a blatant aggression on public taste. The places of these ads should have been chosen by specialists and not by the officials of the district of plants and slums. I do not say the residents' opinions should be taken in consideration before placing these ads, because our people are of no value. Therefore, I call on the Maadi residents to at least boycott any products or services advertised on these ugly boards that started to move from Maadi Corniche to the key quarters in the district that was once "classy". I call on all of those who sent me complaints against that flagrant aggression to boycott the products and services advertised on these ugly boards and write to the owners of these products to the effect that they will boycott their products till they stop placing their advertisements in these places and in this ugly way does not respect the people.
