Moment of Truth.. Initiative I hope CBE Would Adopt

By: Elham Aboul Fateh

I know very well that the state has provided and offered a lot to the martyrs and their families and I know very well that President Abdel Fattah El Sisi supports and takes care of them. They always accompany him in every occasion, he became a father to them.

Last week, I read a column by colleague Mohammad Radi published in Al-Akhbar newspaper entitled Martyr's right, calling to write off martyrs’ unpaid debts, obtained in the form of loans or instalments to buy goods from banks. The martyrs’ families are threatened with imprisonment due to these debts. Well, I agree with colleague Mohammad Radi as it is very important to write off these debts. We have heroes who sacrifice their lives for us and for the security of our country. They didn’t hesitate to defend their country and its security.  Through their strength and bravery, they fought the enemies of the homeland until they were martyred and lost their lives. The homeland should support those martyrs who died leaving their newborns. We also saw their parents and brothers wanting to volunteer and fight terrorism to take revenge.

I tried to search for any initiatives or reactions to this article. I found only some inpidual initiatives from National Bank of Egypt and Nasser Social Bank to write off these debts and of course, these initiatives are not enough. We know that the banks have a budget item called bad debts, which means that the bank has lost hope in collecting these debts. Why does not the Central Bank of Egypt issue a decision that the debts of those martyrs are bad debts and write off them? Hence, the family of the martyr is not required to pay them. We need a decision from the Central Bank to oblige all national banks to do so. Why doesn’t the parliament pass a legislation to write off these debts?! We should appreciate the sacrifices of the martyrs.

We want an initiative to exempt the families of those brave heroes from paying these debts, or the martyrs fund pays all the debts of the martyrs. This initiative, if applied, will be a word of thanks to the martyrs who deserve it, as they fulfilled the promise, and defended the homeland until they lost their lives.