A candle in the wind INTERIOR Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin has launched an ambitious plan to restore security and discipline on the streets of the capital, which includes removing all encroachments, as well as the vendors. However, Minister Gamal Eddin should couple his plan with a comprehensive project to try to find an urgent and realistic solution to the problem of street vendors. This project should involve the relocation of thousands of poor street vendors to a well-planned central market that could be built especially for them, away from the main downtown drag. It should be borne in mind that the Minister's plan to restore discipline to our streets will not go far enough, if the Government denies these hawkers, who include young unemployed and low-income people, the chance to make a decent income by offering them licensed stalls, or kiosks, where they could sell their wares in their own market. If the problem of street hawkers remains unresolved, Minister Gamal Eddin's plan will be like a candle in the wind. The flame will soon go out, so no-one can enjoy its light. Putting the police in order NOW that President Mohamed Morsi has the executive powers in his hands, it is high time for him to take swift action, putting the Ministry of Interior in order. This much-desired step should include getting rid of all incompetent senior police officers, as well as a group of top figures, true disciples of the Ministry's former leaders, who are now in prison on charges including corruption. The Ministry should replace these incompetent officers, who adamantly refuse to mend their ways, with more efficient, young leaders whose main concern is restoring security on the nation's streets. Since assuming office in June, the President has started a 100-day development plan, in which restoring security is a top component. It is lamentable that these inefficient senior officers, who falsely boasted that they'd made great progress in security over three decades, are still in office, while younger, more competent officers are denied the chance to assume high posts in the Ministry. Useful remnants! IT is ironic and absolutely unbelievable that, within the past month alone, private Egyptian investors have launched more than 20 satellite channels at a total cost of LE500 million. It is lamentable that these channels, which broadcast belly dancing programmes, video clips, drama, sports and irresponsible talk shows, have been opened in a country where citizens drink sewage water and women are constantly harassed on the street and the Underground. Egyptians would have plenty to watch, if just five of these channels had opened; the money spent on the rest could have easily been channelled by their owners into useful development projects that the nation urgently needs. These channels will not help solve the problems of the poor, but they will lead to more harassment of women on the nation's streets, simply because the majority of their viewers are young, unemployed men. The public rightly describe these young male harassers as useless remnants of the old regime, they could actually be very useful – playing a patriotic role on our border with Israel. According to news reports, Israel has recently deployed a battalion of female soldiers on our border. The Egyptian Government should in its turn send a battalion of male molesters to Sinai, in order to harass these female Israeli soldiers, rather than tormenting Egyptian women and girls on our streets.
