Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi met on Wednesday the cabinet to follow up on the projects under the “Decent Life” initiative to develop the Egyptian countryside.
The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy Mohamed Shaker, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El–Molla, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said, and others.
The President was briefed on the progress of work and the executive position of the first phase of the initiative, which includes a total number of 1,477 villages and its dependencies, comprising about 18 million citizens where the implementation steps were reviewed at the level of the Republic, and the measures adopted to take into account the circumstances and special nature of each governorate.
They reviewed achievement rates at the level of various sectors, especially sewage networks, drinking water, natural gas, electricity and lighting, communications and post, transport and roads, model government complexes, irrigation and agriculture, education, health, youth and sports, social solidarity programmes, housing, and local development along with various initiatives for economic development.
They also reviewed overall challenges that emerged between the planning stage and practices on the ground, and the measures taken to overcome them, were also reviewed, in addition to the impact of the Corona crisis and the Russian-Ukrainian crisis on the supply chains of raw materials and various industrial components and their global prices, taking into account the volume of unauthorized businesses.
This is preceded in the framework of the initiative projects, which is considered the largest of its kind in the history of national projects in Egypt, in addition to the presence of large population blocks outside the urban estates of villages, as well as the large number of satellites of the villages, numbering more than 10,000 dependents, in addition to the conflict of implementation of some projects with the cultivation season and the supply of some strategic food commodities.
The spokesperson added that the President directed to rely on local components as much as possible in the implementation of “dignified life” projects due to the impact of global supply chains, which also represents an opportunity to localize the industry and rely on local technology, in partnership and cooperation with investors and the private sector, especially in infrastructure projects.