I honestly don't know why the government bothers to announce its intention to raise the price of any commodity or that it will reconsider the issue of subsidies, if it can do it anyway, without making any statements. Could it possibly be that our venerable government is addicted democracy? Or is it our government's respect for its citizens; that respect with which it treats all our other rights such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to differ, even if it means throwing out other human rights declared by the United Nations which don't pertain specifically to Egyptian citizens? It seems that Greater Cairo's Water Authority has come up with a new ruse to rake in as much money as it wants without raising utility bills or linking water consumption to the amount of garbage we produce or the electricity we consume. Other, less intelligent authorities had done that and opened the gates of hell on themselves until they were forced to backtrack when citizens proved through a court decision - and through sheer logic - that electricity consumption has nothing to do with garbage. As for the water authority's trick, it can be summed up in an administrative order to the effect that employees charged with doing house calls to record meter readings don't really need to go to all that trouble. Instead of risking their lives by walking around in Cairo's potholed streets, they can now relax and simply come up with a reading of their own and claim that the meter is either broken or unclear. The Water Authority employee is not responsible for these meter problems because it's all the citizens' fault. They're the ones who use the water then break the meter on purpose. It's the citizens who force the Authority to collect an invented amount - and if they don't pay up, the Authority can cut the water off completely. One Maadi resident who had had enough of paying hundreds of pounds every few month for water she doesn't use - for she lives alone in a flat that neither has a garden nor a swimming pool - decided to complain at Maadi's water authority office herself, asking them how they determine the amount due each month. When she arrived, she found the employees to be extremely polite. They showed all due respect and many of them kept repeating: Happy Eid, Madame, the way they would in feast to collect their charity. But since Eid El Fitr was long gone and Eid El Adha was still a long time ahead, she didn't quite understand what they were talking about. She was even more surprised when she noticed their frown every time she returned the greeting, after which they would repeat it even more emphatically. When they lost hope of ever getting the response they wanted, they put her through to the responsible official, who explained that the problem was that her meter was broken. "I'm terribly sorry, she said, "but aren't you the ones who provide us with these meters and so when they're broken, shouldn't you fix them? "But these meters can never be fixed, he said. "I've been paying these exorbitant utility bills for two years now and your employees never do the reading and only now you tell me that the meter's broken and can't be fixed. Why don't you just replace it? "But you haven't asked us to replace it, he replied. "That's because I didn't know it was broken. When I used to check, it seemed to be working because the numbers used to change from one month to the next, but they don't correspond with the huge bills I've been paying. At that point, the official had lost his patience. "So now that you know it's broken, what do you want? he snapped. "I want to file a request to replace this meter - the one nobody bothers to read. Is that possible?! she said. "Everything is possible, he replied. "But if you don't give the employee who comes to do the reading what he wants when he he says "Happy Eid, Madame , I really can't see how replacing the meter will be of any use to you because he'll stop coming round altogether. "But it's not the Feast, she said, to which the official replied, "But at the Greater Cairo Water Authority, all our days are feasts! Mohamed Salmawy is President of the Arab Writer's Union and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo. This article is syndicated in the Arabic press.
