CAIRO - Shantytowns have mushroomed in Egypt, to the extent that they are now an integral part of the country, warn experts. Much of the blame for this ought to be laid at the door of the governments that managed the country in recent decades, since they are largely responsible for the negligence the country is suffering from, they say. In these shantytowns, usually built on the periphery of cities, poor people live in hovels made from bits of plywood, corrugated iron and sheets of plastic. They are riddled with poverty and disease, deprived of the simplest necessities of life, like proper sanitation and electricity. About 1 billion people, almost one-sixth of the world's population, live in shantytowns, which also tend to lack basic services found in more formally organised settlements, such as policing, medical care and fire fighting services. Squatter settlements constitute a big challenge in a developing nation like Egypt, that has been struggling to build its economy for many years. Around 18 million of the country's 88 million population are thought to be living in about 1,100 shantytowns, found in 20 governorates. A hateful mixture of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, ignorance, deprivation and disease in these places is surely partly to blame for the violence that emerged here in the 1980s and 1990s. Shantytowns are widely seen as fertile ground for extremism, since suffering has made their dwellers tacit enemies of the Government and society. According to the Cabinet Information and Decision-making Support Centre (IDSC), there are 1,034 shantytowns, while the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) puts the figure at 1,221. The National Institute for Planning says there are 1,109. Despite the slight differences in figures, all are agreed that poverty, disease and ignorance are rife in Egypt's slums. According to the opposition newspaper Al-Wafd, 60 per cent of the children in these areas don't get a proper education, while most of them have to work to help their families with money. Some of them can be seen begging in traffic-congested streets. If 18 million people live in the shantytowns, that's about 37 per cent of the population of urban areas. According to studies, 38 per cent of these 18 million people live on LE200 (about $35) monthly. A study by the Egyptian Democratic Centre (EDC) says that Egyptian shantytowns have a very high population density, 128,500 per square kilometre, fivefold the accepted rate. Greater Cairo (the governorates of Cairo, Giza and el-Qaliubiya) is home to the lion's share of Egypt's shantytowns. The high rate of domestic migration, from rural areas to these governorates, is a major reason for this. Extremist groups rely for recruits on shantytowns, where they find ready listeners in the shape and form of destitute people, eager to avenge themselves on a state that has ignored them for years, say experts. All this has turned the shantytowns into a great menace to the whole country. “These areas never figured in the development plans of Mubarak's governments, which only looked after the interests of the regime's officials and their allies, the business tycoons,” according to Saad Hanfi, a social expert. “Because of this, shantytowns have been the main source for the acts of thuggery and bullying that have plagued Egypt since the revolution started.”
