Corruption, greed cost many lives in Egypt

By Hasan Mroue

CAIRO (DPA): Road and railway accidents, collapsing buildings, plunging elevators and infected blood donations have become routine incidents in Egypt reported daily by the media.

Critics say the reason for the frequency of such disastrous events is a dominant ambiance of corruption, irresponsibility and greed in front of which most people feel helpless.

Since the beginning of the year a series of accidents have rocked the country, sending shock waves in Egyptian society due to their frequency and the high tolls they inflicted.

Most recently, a young wife lost her life while on a rail trip to her hometown in southern Egypt by falling to her death through the dilapidated floor of the train's toilet.

After the large-scale tragedy last year of a train flying off the tracks in the delta town of Kafr el-Dawar killing some 40 people, injuring dozens more and destroying several shops, the woman's death last month led to a public outcry demanding stricter laws to combat negligence in the rail service, especially on third-class trains used by the majority of Egyptians.

"Strict accountability is a must...more than enough lives and taxpayers' money have been wasted for poor service," said an editorial in the English-language daily The Egyptian Gazette.

Since the second week of January three road accidents involving tourist coaches have taken place leading to the death of two German tourists and one Egyptian tour guide, besides several seriously injured passengers.

The last accident on February 11 in which one German woman was killed and 14 others were injured was blamed by the Egyptian authorities on heavy fog on the motorway in southern Egypt.

But one of the survivors interviewed later by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) said the reason for the accident was the "mad" speed which the bus driver irresponsibly took.

"It has nothing to do with fog. We were in the middle of the desert and the sun was shining...the bus was racing," she said.

The German survivors are considering filing a lawsuit against the tourist agency on charges of irresponsibility, not only for the high speed but also for the alleged lack of a first-aid box in the tourist coach.

Tourists still seem to be more fortunate than middle-class and poor Egyptians who have no choice but to travel in defective buses driven by ill-trained drivers, risking their lives in every trip.

Last month a public transport bus fell off a fly-over into a major square on the outskirts of Cairo, killing 22 people and injuring 22 others, according to police. That was not the first nor the last such accident recently.

According to unofficial statistics published in the Egyptian media, up to 28,000 road accidents took place during 1997, costing nearly 6,000 lives and more than a billion dollars in losses.

Bad roads and speeding are the main reasons, an official from the transport department in Cairo told the international daily Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat.

"Several routes across the nation got off to a spectacular start, but neglect has diminished their life," commented the Gazette.

Also an odd but common way of dying in Egypt is crashing to death in badly-maintained elevators which has earned them the title "boxes of death". Dozens of such accidents are reported in Egypt every year due to negligence and poor maintenance.

But living in a building where the chances of the elevator plunging are high is still better than living in an unlicensed block of flats built with cheated low-quality building materials or suffering from poor maintenance.

Also in January, nine people were killed and several injured when their six-storey building collapsed after four days of mild shaking, apparently due to illegal digging work on an adjacent plot of land for a construction project.

Only two days later, eight peopled were killed and 14 were injured in a stampede at the Alexandria stadium when crowds poured into the playing field to attend a football game after a delay in opening the gates.

Spectators apparently were kept waiting outside the 35,000- seat stadium in the Mediterranean town before an Egypt Cup game for a long time and then when the gates opened, lighting in the stadium failed to come on in time.

The daily newspaper Al-Akhbar said the "disaster" was a result of inefficient planning and organization by those in charge of the stadium.

All these accidents have heated the debate in the media and the parliament over corruption and negligence in a seemingly helpless effort to improve services in overpopulated Egypt where the majority of the 62 million population live in poverty.

Add to all this, a new source of panic has hit Egyptians recently with reports of a scandal of contaminated blood sold by two major blood banks which have been closed down after three women contracted the HIV virus through blood transfusion.

The blood scam led to investigations that revealed unlimited violations at the two blood banks, including 144 blood donations during 1998 by an HIV carrier named Saeed Metwali Salem.

The homosexual unemployed man apparently was donating blood three times per week for money. The Gazette said the banks did not have sophisticated equipment to ensure the safety of the blood donors and did not even register the medical history of the donors in violation of Egyptian laws.

The scandal has put the health ministry in a state of high alarm in search of a solution, starting with a large-scale inspection campaign at all blood banks across the country.

Basema Shalaby of the ministry's blood bank department told the government-run daily al-Gumhuriya last week that so far five private banks have been shut down for failing to heed regulations.

But the official said in the interview that her department's budget was too meager to cover acquiring advanced blood testing devices.