CAIRO, Sept 9, 2018 - In a fresh drive to ensure the complementarity of the national plan for upgrading the country's road networks, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has given directives for the formation of an inter-ministerial and inter-developmental committee to review the old road network and submit within a month a report on means of elevating the efficiency of old roads. The directives to this effect came in a speech that President Sisi gave on Sunday at a ceremony marking the inauguration of the final stage of the north-west arch of the Regional Ring Road as well as the opening via videoconferencing of some bridge projects. Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli, Defence Minister General Mohamed Zaki, other cabinet ministers and senior state officials attended the event. During the ceremony, the president directed that a committee comprising the ministries of housing and transport as well as the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, the Military Technical Academy and the Administrative Control Authority be formed to review the conditions of the country's old road network and to submit within one month a report on the modalities recommended for lifting the efficiency of old roads. The projected committee, President Sisi said, would also be entrusted with the task of estimating the cost of lifting the efficiency and quality of this network. The president also urged officials to review the conditions of the more-than-10-year-old bridges and make sure of their conformity with efficiency, maintenance and safety standards. The committee will have to either license the worthiness of such bridges or recommend immediate repairs if a default is detected, he added. The president thanked the Ministry of Transport, the government and the Armed Forces over accomplishing road and bridge projects, highlighting that quality and efficiency are the main targets of carrying out these projects. In a brief statement to the ceremony, Transport Minister Dr Hisham Arafat noted that the newly opened Regional Ring Road has an advantage of serving dry docks and logistic points in such a manner that bolster domestic trade. The Regional Road, he added, has also been designed to permit riverine units to navigate unimpeded. On the issue of encroachments on farmlands, President Sisi stressed the importance of proper planning for farmlands and preventing constructions on agricultural areas, warning in this connection against the danger that encroachments on agricultural lands represents. To counter this problem, President Sisi called for planning agricultural lands around roads and warned against random growth. President Sisi said that governorates together with the Irrigation Ministry should ensure that the use of water resources be optimised especially through preventing the consumption of large amounts of water by sub-canals, eichhornia and herbs. The president asserted the role of the government, people, the Armed Forces as well as the ministries of the interior and housing in this regard, calling for the necessity to appropriately compensating people whose land properties have been taken off. President Sisi said that should farmlands be left without planning for a period of between five and six years they would turn into uncontrolled residential areas. The president also instructed the Head of the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, Major General Kamel el-Wazeer, to expedite the required procedures for compensating, as soon as possible, citizens whose lands have been taken off due to construction of roads. President Sisi also highlighted the necessity that citizens observe the depth of the agricultural lands and the volume of encroachments on them, calling for studying the issue instead of having any random growth or planning. The president warned against the continuation of the spread of encroachments on farmlands and the random urban expansion in its surroundings which will later need sanitary drainage as well as water and electricity networks. President Sisi asserted that the state as represented by the government, people, the Interior Ministry, the Armed Forces and the Housing Ministry is bearing the responsibility of addressing this problem.
