CAIRO: Evicted residents of Madinet El-Salam threatened on Tuesday to resume their sit-in after the government failed to deliver on its promises to give them apartments.
The residents — known as the Maspero protesters in reference to the state-TV building in front of which they were camped — had surrounded the governorate building on Monday, preventing employees from leaving.
They clashed with Central Security Forces (CSF) that dispersed them from outside the governorate building.
At the same time, CSF and the military police closed streets surrounding the prime minister’s home in Dokki to prevent the protesters from reaching it.
On Sunday night, residents tried to storm PM Essam Sharaf’s house, while protesting there for the second time. CSF and military police dispersed the protest and told them to head to the governorate building.
The residents, who live in tents in a district on the eastern outskirts of Cairo, had staged a sit-in outside the state-TV building for three months. On Saturday, they ended the sit-in and headed to El-Salam district when they were told they will receive apartments.
When they found that their names were not on the list of those allocated housing units, they clashed with the police deployed there. After iftar, they headed to the Cabinet building in downtown Cairo, hoping to meet the premier.
When they were told Sharaf was not there, they headed to his house in Dokki. In the early hours of Sunday, a governorate official informed the residents that they will be given apartments.
One protester told Daily News Egypt that the cars supposedly transferring them to to the promised housing units dropped them in the desert empty-handed. This is why they went back to Sharaf’s house, they said.
Fifty-six families have received housing units so far, but 200 are still waiting, they said.
A woman who identified herself as Om Mostafa said, “If they don’t give us the apartments we will go back to sit in outside the TV building.”
