Egypt demolishes 120,000 illegal buildings on green land

[DJKeefy]

Officials have launched a campaign against unlicensed structures on arable land, with a tougher law in the works.

Egypt’s interim government has demolished 120,000 unlicensed structures that were built on 7,000 feddans* since the 25 January uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the agriculture ministry announced in a statement on Thursday.

There have been a whopping 1.2 million cases of violations on arable land in the last three years, leading to the loss of 47,000 feddans, the statement added.

A nationwide crackdown on unlicensed buildings was launched last month by the ministries of agriculture and the interior along with local authorities in the targeted areas.

The most affected governorates are Monoufiya, Beheira, Gharbiya and Qalioubiya. Fewer cases have been reported in the governorates of North Sinai, New Valley, Matrouh and Suez.

According to estimates made last year by a former high-ranking ministry official, violations before the 2011 revolution led to an average loss of 20,000 feddans per year.

Agriculture Minister Ayman Abu Hadid affirmed in the statement that amendments should be approved soon regarding the country's agricultural law to impose stricter penalties on those who build illegal settlements on agricultural land.

The amendments will impose a jail sentence of at least one month and fines from LE50,000 up to LE100,000 for all involved parties.

*The feddan is a unit of area used in Egypt, Sudan and Syria. 1 feddan = 1.038 acres

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/99304.aspx

[Who2]

It could be just an egyptian rumor but, I hear they are going after Jorfe next, all totally new build and on green land, 'bananas island!.....

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[Glyphdoctor]

Members of this forum should realize Google Earth can show what was there before your buildings were. Just set the clock back a bit and voila GREEN!

[BBLUX]

Did that Glyph. Ours was present in 2002. However, in the 7 years we have been here there has been a HUGE increase in buildings on the open farm land on the West Bank. Some weeks it can be difficult to get around the village roads for piles of building material.

[Chocolate Eclair]

when the surveyors openned their plans for Gorf the other week there were only 50% of the buildings with licences shown. going to be interesting about Ramla and the flood plains. Mind you people have known Ramla's been iffy for a long time. The thing is sorting out green land from freehold land from government land. At the last Governors meeting we were told that they could not demolish them because people were living in them, but what about the ones people are not living in? I thought this was a strange answer, this has not been a problem in the past, remember the homes along where the Avenue of the Sphinx, no consideration was given to people that lived in them.