By the Gazette Editorial Board The damaging effect of last week's heavy rainfall in New Cairo, a posh Cairo suburb, has highlighted the dilapidated condition of infrastructure in some parts of the capital and the poor regular maintenance of basic utilities. A number of New Cairo officials have been suspended over this flagrant case of negligence. Matters, however, will not rest at that. The Chairman of the Cairo Sanitary Drainage Company, Mansur Badawi, has thrown a bombshell into the issue. He says that rain or no rain, New Cairo is expected to have trouble this summer because the drainage network is not designed to deal with the current amount of sewage. "It is already working beyond its capacity", he told an Arabic newspaper. He said that he had warned of this problem two years ago but no one seemed to have bothered. The point is that urban expansion in New Cairo has been taking place at a great pace in recent years. And the newly established housing projects rely on the already available utilities such as drainage stations which operate by means of a one-pipe system (for rain and sewage). This has underlined the fact that haphazard attitudes are still part and parcel of the performance in many sectors. It stands to reason that licensed private sector urban expansion in any part of the country should be paralleled by a government plan to establish new utilities or to upgrade the capacity of the existing ones. According to Badawi, New Cairo is in need of 12 drainage stations at a total cost of LE12 billion. The torrential rain of last week, which is likely to recur this week, according to the weather forecast, has been eye opening on two important points. Firstly, government departments and their affiliate bodies still prefer to react to emerging crises rather than act preemptively. And so despite calls voiced in the wake of each new incident urging a more disciplined performance, the work system proved to be still flawed with many shortcomings. When rain fell heavily in 2015 flooding the streets of Alexandria, the government hastened to implement infrastructure solutions to enhance the city's resistance to potential floods. And now the same will be applied to New Cairo. But we should not wait for rain to hit hard and damage another area in order to take the required measures. And, secondly, while the state is implementing a development plan which involves the setting up of several new communities throughout the nation, it must pay equal attention to the maintenance of old projects. The two have to go together to secure sustainable development. The damaging effect of last week's heavy rainfall in New Cairo, a posh Cairo suburb, has highlighted the dilapidated condition of infrastructure in some parts of the capital and the poor regular maintenance of basic utilities. A number of New Cairo officials have been suspended over this flagrant case of negligence. Matters, however, will not rest at that. The Chairman of the Cairo Sanitary Drainage Company, Mansur Badawi, has thrown a bombshell into the issue. He says that rain or no rain, New Cairo is expected to have trouble this summer because the drainage network is not designed to deal with the current amount of sewage. "It is already working beyond its capacity", he told an Arabic newspaper. He said that he had warned of this problem two years ago but no one seemed to have bothered. The point is that urban expansion in New Cairo has been taking place at a great pace in recent years. And the newly established housing projects rely on the already available utilities such as drainage stations which operate by means of a one-pipe system (for rain and sewage). This has underlined the fact that haphazard attitudes are still part and parcel of the performance in many sectors. It stands to reason that licensed private sector urban expansion in any part of the country should be paralleled by a government plan to establish new utilities or to upgrade the capacity of the existing ones. According to Badawi, New Cairo is in need of 12 drainage stations at a total cost of LE12 billion. The torrential rain of last week, which is likely to recur this week, according to the weather forecast, has been eye opening on two important points. Firstly, government departments and their affiliate bodies still prefer to react to emerging crises rather than act preemptively. And so despite calls voiced in the wake of each new incident urging a more disciplined performance, the work system proved to be still flawed with many shortcomings. When rain fell heavily in 2015 flooding the streets of Alexandria, the government hastened to implement infrastructure solutions to enhance the city's resistance to potential floods. And now the same will be applied to New Cairo. But we should not wait for rain to hit hard and damage another area in order to take the required measures. And, secondly, while the state is implementing a development plan which involves the setting up of several new communities throughout the nation, it must pay equal attention to the maintenance of old projects. The two have to go together to secure sustainable development.
