Coronavirus postpones launch of Egypt’s big projects, Grand Museum
April 5, 2020, 7:17 am

Coronavirus postpones launch of Egypt’s big projects, Grand Museum

Municipal workers sanitize the areas surrounding the Giza pyramids complex. (File photo AP)

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday postponed moving civil servants to a planned new administrative capital city to 2021 from 2020 due to the coronavirus epidemic, a blow to a flagship project for Sisi that has already faced delays. Coronavirus

Sisi also postponed the launch of some other big projects including the Grand Egyptian Museum and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization to next year, the presidency said in a statement.

The decision was “due to the circumstances and repercussions of the process of combating the spread of the new Coronavirus either at the national level or globally,” it said.

The first group of civil servants was to be transferred to the government district in the still-under-construction new administrative capital, 45 km (28 miles) east of Cairo, in June.

Sisi’s government has said it wants to start running Egypt from the new city as soon as the middle of 2020. But the $58 billion project has struggled to raise funds and faced other challenges after some investors pulled out. Before the announcement, one employee involved with projects at the new capital said some companies working there had partly suspended work at the site and that some workers were being asked to stay at home on half wages amid measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.

A spokesman of the Administrative Capital for Urban Development, the owner and developer of the project, denied reports that construction works stopped due to coronavirus, telling Reuters that some contracting companies just lowered the numbers of laborers as a precautionary measure.

The company is owned 51 percent by the military and 49 percent by the Housing Ministry.

Housing minister on Saturday briefed Sisi on measures taken to assure the safety and health of workers and the continuation of work at various projects despite the postponements, the presidency said.

Announced at an economic conference in 2015, the new desert city is envisioned to replace Cairo, the existing capital on the Nile that has become a traffic-clogged, urban sprawl of more than 20 million people.

Egypt has reported 1070 coronavirus cases as of Saturday including 71 deaths. The most populous Arab country has been hit hard by the outbreak, which has wiped out its tourism industry and prompted authorities to close airports, restaurants, farms, and shops and to impose a night curfew. The Grand Egyptian Museum, built next to the Giza Pyramids, was due to open during the last quarter of 2020, and the official launch of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, which was opened partially in 2017, was planned this year too. levant

source: Reuters levant

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BENEFIT, the Kingdom’s innovator and leading company in Fintech and electronic financial transactions service, has sponsored the BuildHer CityHack 2025 Hackathon, a two-day event spearheaded by the College of Engineering and Technology at the Royal University for Women (RUW).
Aimed at secondary school students, the event brought together a distinguished group of academic professionals and technology experts to mentor and inspire young participants.
More than 100 high school students from across the Kingdom of Bahrain took part in the hackathon, which featured an intensive programme of training workshops and hands-on sessions. These activities were tailored to enhance participants’ critical thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and team-building capabilities, while also encouraging the development of practical and sustainable solutions to contemporary challenges using modern technological tools.
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Professor Riyadh Yousif Hamzah, President of the Royal University for Women, commented: “This initiative reflects our commitment to advancing women in STEM fields. We're cultivating a generation of creative, solution-driven female leaders who will drive national development. Our partnership with BENEFIT exemplifies the powerful synergy between academia and private sector in supporting educational innovation.”
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