Preserving Agricultural Land.. Assignment .. Challenge .. Test!, Op,ed

The government is still strongly confronting encroachments on agricultural lands and violating buildings. We have suffered and are still suffering from the impact of these infringements, after the volume of the violations reached about 3 million violating buildings, and one million and 900 thousand encroachments on the agricultural lands.

The agricultural area is eroding very quickly and within a few years. if the encroachment continues at the same rates, our black silt-laden land will disappear. Building mosques and graves is the easiest way to circumvent the law!

Let’s contemplate some aspects of the campaign that the president is following up, whether through his meetings and listening to the citizens, or through the reports from various bodies.

The campaign's title is "The Right of the State". Its slogan, launched by the president, is summarized in three words: “Assignment, Challenge, and Test”. These words represent a strong, firm and clear message meaning "assignment of officials in defiance of the violators, and evil forces, and this represents a crucial test for the government" ... on stopping infringements!.

The state’s right is not just to collect fines from violators of its laws, but rather a vision that includes stopping the encroachment on the land and preserving it. Our agricultural land is the source of food and the first item in our national security.

The golden rule says that those who do not have food, do not have the right to freedom. If we have a look at the countries around us, we find that the countries that got disintegrated by the unrest were not disintegrated by foreign interference in their affairs, but rather they got disintegrated when their governments started importing their food from abroad.

May God have mercy on the former Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Yusef Wali, who died yesterday. He was worried of wasting our agricultural land. Throughout my work at "Al-Akhbar" Newspaper investigations, I could confirm that he was one of the ministers who believed in the rule of owning food by expanding agricultural land.

He began his work in agriculture during the era of late President Abdel Nasser. He was honored by President Sadat. He took over the Ministry of Agriculture during the Era of late President Mubarak. He fought for the policy of horizontal expansion to get out of the Nile Valley Delta to the new lands. The evil forces chased him - as usual - with rumors and carcinogenic pesticides, no one can deny his role in modernizing Egyptian and Arab agriculture!

The volume of encroachments on the fertile agricultural lands since January 2011 until 2018 amounted to nearly one million and 800 thousand cases, causing the loss of one hundred thousand acres. This leads to the import of agricultural and food commodities in large quantities and adds pressure on foreign exchange resources. Hence, there is a constant need to invest in reclamation of new agricultural lands.

According to the report of the House of Representatives, during the same period, three million violating  building were built in cities and governorates. It is the same way in wasting resources to produce crops, resources are wasted in building new networks of water, sanitation and infrastructure and modernizing them continuously in cities.

So the state must be strict and firm. I was not astonished by the prime minister's statement regarding the necessity of the immediate elimination of all violating constructions, stressing that the construction violations reconciliation period, which is due to come to a close at the end of September 2020, will not be extended. The mission is clear and the danger is besieging everyone. the instructions also are clear to confront the new aggression. The test is difficult, it is a test for the people and the government, but success is not impossible!