Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said that the national project for the development of the Egyptian family came to complement the efforts of the government to develop the state and move towards the “new republic” through a package of development projects.
Madbouly added during the event of the National Project for the Development of the Egyptian Family in the presence of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, that the state must increase the number of hospitals every year in terms of buildings, infrastructure, and human capital.
Furthermore, Madbouly said that human development and overpopulation remain a challenge, pointing out that in 1950, the population of Egypt was 20m; and in March, it will reach 103m, and the share of the amount of water the country receives is a fixed amount.
Additionally, he pointed out that the per capita share of water has declined from 580 to 550 cbm only.
In terms of the health sector and the number of hospitals, the PM asserted that the Egyptian state is required annually to establish a large number of hospitals despite its capabilities.
PM Madbouly also said that tens of thousands of projects have been implemented over the past seven years at a cost of more than EGP 6.2 trillion, adding that the projects are being implemented across the entirety of Egypt to compensate citizens for the difficult conditions they faced over the past period.
He pointed out that despite the difficult global conditions, what Egypt witnessed was a miracle, however, efforts still need to be intensified due to the population increase.
“If the population rate continues to increase, what will happen in 20 years? With the same fixed current amount of water, there will be no alternative to the expansion of seawater desalination, which is a very complicated and high-cost alternative,” he said.
The PM also said that human capital is valuable, and all countries are measured by the number of residents and their capabilities, but the issue is not related to the number only, but to the quality of the human element and whether it will be at the highest level of education and health.
He explained that this matter was confirmed by the Egyptian Constitution in Article 41, which stipulates that the Egyptian state must set a programme for development and population rationalisation in light of maximising the use of available natural resources and developing the human element, which is the issue we raise to target the problem of overpopulation, which affects national security and the livelihood of this country.
Furthermore, he said that to solve this crisis, the government studied the experiences of other countries in dealing with the problem of overpopulation and put them into programmes of their own, and through the study of those programmes, developed a clear vision for citizens’ access to all basic services and helped them solve the problem of family planning.
“The goal is to get Egyptian families on board with the idea of having a maximum of two children per family, so that in the next 20 years, Egypt will achieve the highest development rates and the Egyptian citizens will feel the real result of these national projects.”
Madbouly concluded his speech by saying that the time has come for us as Egyptians to move together to achieve the goal of rationalising and reducing the population increase in Egypt over the next 20 years to compensate for previous accumulations.
