EGYPT: Cairo slum dwellers still waiting to leave harsh living conditions

For many of the people who live in the al-Diwiqa slum, high atop Cairo's Muqattam plateau, the cramped brick homes and desolate alleyways of their overcrowded neighbourhood are all they have ever known. For over twenty five years, the poverty-stricken residents have lived in this shantytown that was one of Cairo's first "ashwaiyyat", a word that refers to the improvised collections of flimsy dwellings that have sprung up on the city's outskirts to house the legions of poor who migrate to the city annually. Built in the heart of the already poor Manshiyat Nasser district, al-Diwiqa is essentially a slum within a slum. A move to the downtrodden red brick apartment blocks that surround it seems an unattainable dream for the dwellers of the slum's ramshackle alleyways. Meanwhile, the nearby government-built apartment blocks constructed for the residents of al-Diwiqa, called the Suzanne Mubarak housing complex, remain empty and officially shut to the people who have been for years promised a move there. Al-Diwiqa resident Um Mohammed says residents' lives inside the claustrophobic quarters of tiny homes, many of which do not have running water or reliable electricity, is a constant struggle. "I wish they'd move us out. Here life is miserable, and the neighborhood is awful, and the area is awful, everything here is bad. What I mean is here the good - the bad destroys the good," she said. Her husband says they are still waiting for the move to a better life the government promised them long ago. "We should be moved to a cleaner residence. They put us here only temporarily. Temporary, but I've been here for 22 years now. In this temporary state since '83, and until now they haven't moved us. Well the houses are empty in Suzanne (housing complex) over there," he said. The existence of places like al-Diwiqa is a function of the massive urbanization that has taken place in Egypt over recent decades. With the vast majority of Egypt's economic life concentrated in Cairo, the country's capital, the sprawling metropolis draws hundreds of thousands of new residents every year. By most estimates Cairo's population has doubled since the 1970s, and is now variously estimated at between 12 to 17 million, depending on where you draw municipal boundaries. In a city that was never designed to withstand that burden, the emergence of hastily built shantytowns like al-Diwiqa, which house millions of people, is inevitable. These "ashwaiyyat" exist outside the official municipal structure and often do not have running water or sewage systems. They are magnets for disease and inspire hopelessness in those who now call them home. One man who has lived in al-Diwiqa for most of his life says living conditions barely ensure their survival. "Our circumstances here, life is very basic -- basic. There is no water, there is no sewage, there is nothing at all. All we are asking from the government is that they take care of us, to live the way others are living. To live as Egyptians, like the Egyptians who live around us. We want to live like you," said Mohammed. He said residents were frustrated by the government, which has for years been promising them a move out of the slum. "It's our hope that we can all leave from here, the whole area. This area, and these people have been here for 25 years wishing to be moved out of here. And we received many promises that it will be next year, 2007, 2008 - we've heard this since 1998, that in 2000 we'll leave, in 2001, so that we have now reached 2007 and still no-one has done anything for us," he said. What makes such a life of hardship particularly irksome for al-Diwiqa's residents is the fact that the Suzanne Mubarak housing complex is within eyesight. A short distance away lie well constructed towers on paved streets. They are largely empty, for reasons that have not been made clear to the desperate families to whom they were promised. And not far from those apartment buildings in another part of Muqattam lie luxurious villas that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are few places in Egypt where the income gap is more stark than the Muqattam plateau, and for the abandoned residents of al-Diwiqa, who have been frozen in poverty for over two decades, there is no end to their plight in sight.

ITN Source | August 23, 2007

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