The Ministry of Housing, represented by the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA), started assigning new housing units to contractors to start implementing the “Tahya Masr social housing project”.
The housing project was announced by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi earlier in February. Tahya Masr (Long Live Egypt) is a donation based fund that was launched by the president in June 2014. Several businessmen and banks made notable donations.
The main purpose of the fund is to assist establishing services and development projects including financing micro-enterprises, infrastructure projects, small projects for the youth demographic, the development of the informal housing sector, the reduction in the number of homeless and street children, and other projects contributing to support the economic and social situation of the country.
In his recent speech, Al-Sisi encouraged Egyptians to send an EGP 1 “morning text” to the fund to accumulate donations by the end of the year.
NUCA is planning to assign 146,948 units in 10 new cities, state-owned news agency MENA reported. Around 91,536 units will be constructed in 6th of October city while 22,620 will be constructed in 10th of Ramadan City. Over 7,584 units will be constructed in 15th of May City. The remaining units will be constructed in New Cairo and Al-Shorouk City.
Al-Sisi met with Minister of Housing Mostafa Madbouly earlier in February to announce the allocation of EGP 1bn of the money collected in the Tahya Misr fund to construct additional units in the social housing project. Al-Sisi assigned one year to finalise the Tahya Masr housing project.
Madbouly previously announced about 101,000 units of the Social Housing Programme were completed and the remaining 155,000 units are under construction and will be finalised by the end of 2016.
By the end of September 2015, 34,491 units in 23 governorates have been fully implemented amongst the Social Housing Programme. The ministry picked up the project’s pace and announced that by December 2015 the figure increased to 99,000 units.