CAIRO - A presidential decree of 2008 that carved 6th October and Helwan governorates out of Giza and Cairo governorates caused much controversy; many people wondered at the time What the point of this was? Meanwhile, a recent ministerial decree to reincorporate both of these new governorates into Giza and Cairo has aroused more controversy, even lead employees in both governorates to protest. The presidential decree three years ago also made Luxor an independent governorate. On Saturday, hundreds of the officials in the two former governorates protested against the decision, only taken last Thursday, outside the Cabinet headquarters in downtown Cairo, urging Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to reverse the arrangement. They carried banners reading ‘6th October and Helwan one hand' and 'Tell us Mr Sharaf: Why have you cancelled the two governorates?' Mohamed Nagui a senior official in the Commodities Supply Department in the former 6th October Governorate, said that the two governorates were administratively and financially stable throughout their brief, three-year existence. “Millions have been spent on establishing 16 directorates for each governorate, which means that last week's decision is a waste of public money,” Nagui told the daily Arabic newspaper el-Shorouk. A senior education official in Helwan, Mohamed Salah, said that the interim Government's decision to centralise the two governorates meant “correcting one mistake with another mistake”. Another official in Helwan says that the decision to create Helwan Governorate in 2008 three years ago helped focus efforts on areas that were deprived of due services. “If the first decision was rash and based on inadequate studies in terms of defining the administrative boundaries of the governorate, the latest one is not right and not for the good of the people,” adds Nashaat Galal. Scrapping the Governorate of Helwan was a “politically motivated decision and sure it was well studied”, according to its Secretary General, Ahmed Hani, who also expects that this step will harm the people's interests. Dozens of the Helwan citizens have written to the Sharaf Government, urging a referendum on the decision. “We're not puppets,” they say. In a bid to calm them down, the Secretary-General for Local Administration in the Ministry of Local Development, Amr el-Dessouqi, has assured employees of the two former governorates that their wages will not be affected by the decision. “What has happened is just a change of names, not a change of jobs or missions,” he has been quoted as saying. A political activist, Mushira Abu Ghali, told Al-Ahram semi-official newspaper that she was shocked by the centralisation decision, especially when the Prime Minister's spokesman said that the “irreversible” decision follows detailed studies. “This means we have to accept it as a de facto decision,” she said. Mushira stressed that the whole point of the recent revolution was to “overthrow those of rigid views who have corrupted political and economic life with hasty decisions”. Abdel-Hamid Ammar, who lives in the town of Atfeeh, once part of Giza, then Helwan and now Cairo, is skeptical about these 'detailed studies' when the Prime Minister has only been in office for about six weeks. “Why don't they publish these studies, if they do indeed exist, especially as one of the revolutionary demands is for greater transparency?” he asks. It's certainly astonishing that the General Authority for Urban Planning, responsible for such studies, should know nothing about the changes! Authority Chairman Moustafa Madbouli told Al-Ahram that he “didn't know anything about the background to the centralisation decision” and that he was never consulted.
