“Look, that’s where the swine flu is going to come from,” said a weary Marzouka Beshir, pointing to a pile of rubbish rotting under the blazing sun in Imbaba, a working class neighborhood in Cairo.
In their overcrowded areas, overflowing with litter, many like this 52-year-old Egyptian woman have trouble coming to grips with the dramatic measures taken by authorities to combat the A(H1N1) flu.
More than 900 cases of swine flu have been reported in Egypt, and two people have died from it.
PHOTO: AFP
But in a place where hygiene and basic services such as water and electricity are hardly guaranteed, simple instructions like “wash your hands with soap and water” as advised by the WHO and hammered by public television pose for most a serious challenge.
Egypt, whose 80 million people make it the Arab world’s most populous country, is already struggling with the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, and says it is not taking swine flu lightly.
The outbreak of the disease in other countries this past spring sparked a frenzy of combative measures by the Egyptian government.
Restrictions were placed on pilgrims traveling to and from Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s most important pilgrimage sites; schools and universities were shut down.
And the country’s 250,000 pigs were slaughtered in a step that drew heavy criticism.
The government later said that culling the pigs — an action deemed unnecessary by the WHO because pigs were not transmitting the disease to humans — was a public hygiene measure aimed at cleaning up pig breeding in general.
The pigs were feeding on organic waste, however. And now they are gone. The rubbish is piling up and the garbage men can’t keep up. The chronic problem of rubbish collection in the megalopolis of 18 million residents started getting worse after the decision.
And while there is no link between the rubbish and swine flu, the accumulation of waste certainly provides fertile ground for other diseases and discredits the government’s public health warnings.
“It’s a disaster; the pigs were eating the rubbish of all Egypt,” said Eid, 36, a freelance rubbish collector who, like many collectors, also sorted the rubbish for recycling.
Collector Said Mikhail, 74, smoking a shisha (waterpipe) at a local cafe, said: “I used to have pigs. My children earned a living; all was going well. Now the pigs are dead and here I am.”
“My children continue to pick up rubbish because they have no other means of making money, but the workload has increased and the revenue has gone down,” he said.
Egypt produces around 55,000 tonnes of waste every day, including 15,000 tonnes in Cairo alone, official figures say.
In Saft al-Laban, a poor Cairo district, litter is everywhere, near the school, the fruit stalls and the small hospital.
A foul stench from 1m-high piles of rubbish hovers over the area where residents can barely contain their fury.
“The smell is killing us,” Hala Shafiq said from under her black veil.
“This, this is nothing,” she said, shooting a look at the dozens of black plastic bags on the ground where dogs poked around looking for food.
“They talk about swine flu ... let them clean the streets,” she said.
“We can’t take it anymore,” chimed in Mahmud Riad, who owns a nearby restaurant surrounded by debris.
“There are no dumpsters so people throw the rubbish in the street and when the authorities come to pick it up, they leave half of it,” he said.
The government agency charged with cleaning up Cairo’s twin city of Giza admits it is swamped.
“We have neither the manpower, nor the equipment to pick up all the rubbish,” said one official who asked to remain anonymous, as three street sweepers in green outfits dumped torn garbage bags onto a truck already overflowing with litter.
“We are looking to recruit sweepers but people are ashamed of collecting rubbish,” the official said.
The problem has prompted some to take things into their own hands.
Amina al-Bendari, who teaches history at the American University in Cairo, spent two hours with a few neighbors picking up the rubbish on their street.
“We are still paying the [freelance rubbish collectors], but they don’t come every day anymore,” she said. “They killed the pigs. What is the alternative now?”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to