We've already addressed educational services. In a similar vein, much can be done to improve health services. Egyptian universities graduate as many doctors as Great Britain. It shouldn't take a miracle to create a functional and world class socialized health system. And that needs money. Healthcare providers, be they doctors or nurses, need to be well compensated for their labor. The urgent need for adequate facilities and equipment should also be given priority. The reform in the health care and education sectors is just one example of what we can do in terms of elevating the standard of living by providing quality services. The real challenge is to get the average Egyptian to appreciate the value of services in much the same way that he covets tangible goods. With the army of unemployed and underemployed workers, there is a ready supply of labor that can be trained to be service providers. All it takes is additional labor to provide sanitation services, gardeners for public parks or government subsidized plumbers to fix the water leakage problems that could save trillions of cubic meters in wasted resources. Improved public services have a way of trickling down. Doctors will benefit from having their kids attend quality public schools and the teachers will expect physicians to return the favor with first class health care. We'll all enjoy better and cleaner public facilities and our faucets will stop leaking. Improved general services have their own dynamic. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. You take care of my health needs – I'll educate your kid or pick up your garbage. More than anything else, the failure of this regime to upgrade the quality of services is really a question of a lack of vision and creative administrative talents. Egyptians have already proven that they can deliver world class services to foreign tourists and there is absolutely no reason they can't marshal their collective talents to serve each other with the same efficiency, quality and courtesy that they extend to visitors from abroad. Public transportation is another area that has progressively deteriorated over the last three decades. The good news is that solutions for these problems can be imported by a cursory study of how other countries have dealt with similar challenges. Egyptians didn't invent gridlock – we've just managed to do it at a much faster pace than other developing economies because of our penchant for having private cars. If you can afford a private car – more power to you. But don't expect a piaster in gas subsidies – in fact, get ready for a tax and higher registration fees. The only vehicles we should be subsidizing are taxis, buses and the much reviled privately owned and operated ‘mashrou' vans that have led the way in privatizing what used to be public transportation. Whatever one thinks of the crazy drivers in the ‘mashrou' vans, they can proven their abilities to deliver their services at nominal rates and still make a profit. Just oblige them to take driver's education and extend them the privilege of subsidized gas. To make sure the effendis have public transportation options, encourage a new class of air-conditioned ‘mashrou' vans with single pickup points and single destinations. Vans restricted to picking up women passengers will also find ready middle class clients. The rest of the solution is to levy gas taxes on those who insist on congesting the roads with their private Chinese and Korean imported cars. Let them pay a premium for their gas and direct the proceeds to improving public transportation. This will create economic incentives for car owners to commute with taxes, buses and trains. A taxi doesn't have to park – it takes you door to door and moves on and picks up other passengers and it doesn't make a bad situation worse by going around the block a dozen times searching for a place to park. More taxis also mean more jobs. And if the roads aren't so congested – it also means faster commutes for everybody. Egyptians need some sense drilled into them about the proper use of a car in a densely populated country. And that will require coercion – economic coercion. The message should be straight forward – enjoy your private cars for recreation on the weekends but don't even think of commuting with it unless you're willing to pay a stiff price. With enough economic disincentives and a lot of improvement in public transportation and taxi services – we can achieve the same results that have already succeeded in London, New York, Tokyo and a hundred other cities. Private cars that want to drive in downtown Cairo during working hours should be obliged to pay additional registration fees and have special plates that identify them. Any other car caught downtown without proper registration will be instantly fined 100 LE. Every parking space downtown or in the business districts of Heliopolis, Zamalek and El Mohandeseen will have metered parking with stiff rates. The beauty of these small measures is that it would take a few months to implement and every driver will still be free to do as he pleases – they'll just have to pay a congestion tax for creating traffic problems during working hours. Let every Egyptian take out his calculator and add it up – additional gas taxes – fees for driving downtown during working hours – stiff parking fees and let's see how many of them suddenly discover the joy of taking a Taxi or an air-conditioned bus. Now we come to swallowing the bitterest pill – food. Egypt is a country that has been importing its breakfast for some time and before long, we'll probably be importing our lunch. Self-sufficiency in food is a pipe dream. With the looming water shortage and five decades of futile attempts to reclaim enough land to keep up with the number of mouths, Egyptians need to accommodate the reality that we'll be importing a good portion of our nutritional needs for a long time to come. Food subsidies should be considered an anti-poverty program and the only people receiving subsidies should be Egyptians who can't get by without them. ** part 5 of the series will be published June 6 ** Ahmed Amr is an Arab-American economist, a political commentator and the former editor of NileMedia.com. He is the author of “Cilantro Dreams”, “The Sheep and the Guardians” and “My Name is Not Leila” BM
