السؤال الُملح:أين تذهب الأموال الطائلة التى كانت تُحصلها وزارة المالية من خلال الضرائب التى تفرض على مدينة شرم الشيخ؟ الاجابة التى نعرفها أنه بالطبع لم يتم تخصيص جنيه واحد منها لاصلاح شبكة الصرف الصحى المتهالكة و خصوصا المنطقة السياحية منها و أشهرها عالميا و هى خليج نعمة أو رصف شوارع أرض المزاد و الرويسات بحجة أن الميز انية لا تسمح لكنها تسمح و يدبر المال سواء من الدولة أو على شكل معونات من الغرب لإنشاء مشاريع ليست ذو قيمة حقيقية للمواطن لكى تشبع فقط رغبة النظام السابق لكى يزهو امام الز ائرون العرب و الأجانب ليريهم الرفاهية التى يعيشها الشعب المصرى. استوقفنا مشهد منذ اكثر من عام , وجدنا أن هناك امام قاعة المؤتمرات الكبرى بفندق ماريتيم الجولف هناك مشروع تحت الانشاء تصورنا حينها انه قد يكون فندقا أو مبانى مكملة لقاعة المؤتمرات لكن عندما سألنا بعض المسؤلين قالوا لنا انه مشروع لاقامة حديقة نباتية عالمية بها غابة من الشجر و مساحات خضراء و متاحف للنباتات الصحراوية. سألناهم و من منا يريد حديقة و غابة للنباتات و نحن فى الصحراء ثم لماذا هذا المشروع الذى نراه بغير قيمه ولن يفيد المدينة بأى شكل من الأشكال سواء مادى أو أدبى. استفسرنا عن الشخص الذى أمر بانشاء هذه الحديقة .كان الرد انها الهانم . لم نفهم ماذا قصدوا بالهانم فرد آخر فقال انها سيدة مصر الأولى من أمرت بهذا المشروع. كان الرد بمثابة صدمة لسببين الأول هو أهدار الاموال فى أشياء غير مهمة وترك الخدمات الأساسية فى حالة يرثى لها ثانيا و هو الأهم هو علمنا اننا لن نستطيع كشف الحقيقة امام الرأى العام لأن المواجهة ستكون مع عائلة الرئيس فى وقتها. و للحق تخوفنا حينها من بطش أمن الدولة و اغلاق المجلة فالتزمنا الصمت. اما الآن و بعد ان جائت الثورة العظيمة قررنا فتح هذا الملف. اذا كان هذا المشروع قد تم بالفعل على حساب الخدمات الأساسية للمواطنين و اذا كانت تكلفته اكثر من مائة مليون جنيه و كما نرى لم ولن يستفيد منه أحدا و سوف يترك مهملا لذلك إقترَح البعض أن يتحول هذا المشروع الى نادى اجتماعى رياضى لخدمة المقيمين . يكون لهذا النادى ميزانية تُدفع سنويا من اشتراكات الأعضاء و بذلك يكون لهذا المشروع معنى لوجودة فى مدينة شرم الشيخ.
Social networking again – EGYPT REVOLUTION
By : Hesham Abdel Rahman
hesham@compusharm.com
Lack of respect for human rights – stifling freedoms – election fraud – the systematic looting and poor distribution of wealth in the country – the collapse of health and education services – Focus of security services to protect the regime more than people’s security – continuous disturbances and protests. These are the main reasons for the ‘Young Egyptian Revolution,’ which began on 25th January and was conducted mainly by a special group of young people who have struggled for a period of up to three years prior to reaching this point.
We talked earlier about Twitter’s role in Iran’s protests. Today, talk is different. The youth revolution in Egypt had it’s roots in many youth movements that have evolved over the previous three years. Specific notable events were on April 6, 2008 (April 6 Movement), which was a protest against high prices and unemployment. Then followed the movement of Khaled Saied, which arose mainly on the Internet in June 10, 2010 after the incident of torture and murder of a young Alexandrian man after obtaining a video condemning some police officers in illegal acts. The protests against torture and suppression of opinion and human rights had a major role in mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Egyptian youths to the streets on the day of 25th January 2011, a day that was followed by many days of protest that have had a tremendous impact on the revolution. A Facebook group, created by unknown persons one of whom was arrested, on 28th January, one day before the ‘Day of Anger’ and was later known to be a Google MEA executive, announced later that this group includes a dentist who holds a degree in mass communication and two film directors. Facebook groups characterized by the following:
1 – Speed proliferation : group launched after the death of Khalid Saeed on 10/06/2010. After quarter of an hour, the number of its participants reached 300, bringing the number to 30 thousand subscribers after two days, 140 thousand after 18 days figure and rose to 247 thousand on 29 / 8 and 350 thousand on 16/12 t o end the year 2010 with a number of 449 million impressions on the page. It had over 2 million comments and likes to the page and today has 780 thousand subscribers or more and is widely geographically spread, from north Alexandria to south Aswan and from east in El Arish to Marsa Matruh to the west. This supported the revolution in the beginning with about 50 thousand demonstrators. This increased later to also include members abroad, especially the Egyptian community in Britain which is a wealthy and highly educated community. People in this community gathered in front of the Egyptian Ambassador’s house while celebrating Egypt NationalDay and distributed pictures of tortured Khalid to entrants to inform them of the case and spread it internationally.
2 – Member characteristics: The page attracted an age group between 10 to 45 years who own computers and Internet connection. Therefore, it can be assumed that the members had at least a minimum level of education and income, and this contributed to maintaining revolution requests and even dictated that the regime contained only national interests ( which was accepted later ) It also possibly kept the Revolution clean and empty of blood (even though there was police brutality in dealing with them) because of their awareness and understanding of the concept of state property and its components.Being well informed on the concepts of human rights and contact with what is happening elsewhere in the world, Lawyers, journalists and doctors unions contributed to reporting cases of violation of human rights to motivate the revolution.
3 – The use of silent marches : after several days of its establishment , the preparation and guidance that was provided allowed for a call for peaceful marches, wearing black and reading Qurans or Bibles. Within 11 days, groups of several hundred people from different political groups and different social movements such as Kefaya ( Enough) were involved in the movement. In total, from April 6 there were 8000 members of the march up to 25th January in Alexandria, guiding residents of the vicinity to film the marches in order to document and publish it on the Internet for the world to see. Then, for the 50 thousand involved in demonstrations of anger on 28th January 2011, this documentation and the group helped in explaining how to deal with the police harassment or detention and to exposed these cases alongside directing lawyers to support them.
4- E- Campaigns: asked page subscribers to add police officers and students of the Police Academy to be friends on Facebook to talk with them to explain the discontent of the people and contempt for these heinous deeds, as well as detect all cases similar to Khalid’s torture and murders of which there were many cases during these past seven months.
5– Media plan: an accurate media plan was constructed to contact media and personalities of interest regarding torture and police abuse. The group published names and the telephone numbers collected by its subscribers of talk shows in the Egyptian and Arab TV channels and advised several points to speak about. They asked all participants to connect with shows and drew their attention to Khaled’s case and torture in Egypt in general. The group managed to gather many key persons, such as the mother and sister and the brother of Khalid , some artists, doctors and famous opposition politicians to join the marches. In addition, they managed to publish several articles in newspapers such as the famous New York Times – Spanish EL PA?S and others in Britain and the United Emirates, this led to publicity of issues in several countries such as Britain, Canada, and Spain.
6 – Risks and threats: the administrators received many threats, starting from email threats, through to police harassment, preventing them from accessing the areas of the march and risking detention for hours or being beaten in the streets and police cars.
7 – Use of the power of films, songs and poems was used to address the members of the group and raise their enthusiasm and participation. For example, the spiritual movie Vendetta was shown , which talks about a mysterious man who succeeded in freeing his people from the oppression of the ruling regime in an atmosphere similar to what was going on in Egypt – oppression and torture was also shown in the film the Race Champion with Derek Redmond , whose father gave him support during the race and used the Internet to spread an unprecedented type of encouragement.
8 – Teaching Constitutional Rights and Human Rights: where administrators repeated the constitutional rights to members of the page and to clarify the role of the President and the Ministers and how it is funded and organized.
9 – The use of surveys and consultation : In many cases, a page adopted the style of a consultation tool including timings and locations of marches. From the above information, we can conclude that the revolution, which is about to change Egypt, has awakened a special quality in the educated youths loyal to his country, where education and the internet has provided a variety of experience which will lead the country towards a brighter future with hope, dissemination of freedom, support for development and proper utilization and distribution of wealth in Egypt to reach a better level among world countries.
shark attacks
Sharm Business & Community Magazine understands that some people won’t be happy to open the
subject of Shark attack again, hoping instead that it will be forgotten. The magazine would like to tell them not
to put their head in the sand like an ostrich and stop pretending that nothing has happened. It is a fact that there has been an impact on tourism and that impact has led to a bad economy in the city.
We know that the relevant authorities, who are supposed to be in harmony to solve the dilemma, are not doing
enough. The situation, according to the information we have, is still not clear.
We have heard a lot of announcements in the local and world media from unprofessionals.
These announcements have served only to make everybody more confused. The magazine has received many mails and calls from readers and tourists from different nationalities asking whether they can come to Sharm and use the beaches yet or not. We have been trying to reassure them that what happened was an unusual series of accidents, and
still the city is full of other alternatives which they can enjoy so much, especially the warm sunny weather we have this winter compared to what they have in Europe. We have been thinking, during the last period, about all the available
options that can permanently solve this problem and were wondering with whom we should talk. After studying the situation, we found that the national parks of South Sinai are the real, relevant professional body who can give us an exclusive explanation about what happened and what measures will be taken to prevent these kinds of
accident from happening again. Dr. Mohammed Salem, the marine biologist and the director of South Sinai national parks, accepted our invitation to give us an exclusive statement about the attacks.Before we start, we would like to thank him for giving us around 3 hours of his time while his schedule was more than full. We started the interview with a simple question “Why did Sharks carry out all those attacks in such a short period of time?” He answered: Before I go through, let me first correct two misunderstandings that people talk about without the right knowledge. The first
misunderstanding is when people think that the word ‘National Park’ means that it is a place that is
absolutely protected from human activities, I tell them this is wrong. National parks, originally, are the reserve of natural or semi-natural land or marine, declared or owned by a government, set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, animal and environmental protection are restricted from most development. So, it means that those parks can’t be left without human management. The role of the management here is to keep the balance of the ecosystem and
to interfere whenever it is necessary to always keep the balance. Absolute protection of some species can damage not only the ecosystem but more, those species themselves and this is how we manage our National Parks. We manage it according to the international regulations which they use, for example, in the USA and Australia. The second misunderstanding is when I hear everybody speaking about the over fishing as a reason for the problem. First, the expression ‘over fishing’ is a word used to detect the productivity of the fisheries of the area, it is not a bad word. Second, fishing in the Red Sea is being regulated by a governmental authority called the “General Authority for Fish
Resources Development” and not left without control. Very important here to tell your readers is a scientific fact about the Red Sea. The fish productivity of the Red Sea represents 1 per 10,000 of the national productivity of fish in
Egypt. The reason for this is that the nature of the Red Sea doesn’t allow most of the drifting organisms to get to it because of the fact that the Red Sea has no fresh water sources in addition to its topography which blocks those organisms from passing to it. Due to these reasons, plus others, the fish are reducing as you go north, up to the gulf of Aqaba they are very scarce. At the same time, the huge tourism growth has developed huge demands for fish in this area. Back to your question, the last five attacks that took place lately were not the first. We have, between 1996
to 2009, only 12 attacks recorded. So, in total we have 17 attacks, and this a very small number compared to other attacks in other countries, like the USA and Australia. Also, regarding the very high number of snorkelers and swimmers coming every year to the area, we find this number is slight. When we studied all the 17 cases, we found that all of them took place in the same area, from north Na’ama bay to Ras Nasrani (this means a little bit after
Sharks Bay, in front of the airport). The timing and location of the latest 5 attacks had our attentions because,
naturally, Sharks normally fear human contact because they don’t know what they are so they are so careful when
they come closer to them. The other observation we saw was when we realized that the attacks were in the
day, while naturally, Sharks hunt only during the period between sunset to dawn. The question now is what made these sharks, in this specific area, change their behavior and attack a An exclusive interview with the director of South
Sinai’s national parks over the shark attacks Egypt, one nation for all creature they used to fear and at this unnatural time of day? According to our researches and beliefs we found that Sharks in this area have broken their fear and started to realize that humans are not harmful. Not only that, they are a source of free food that they throw to them. Humans can sometimes also give a caress to the Shark while feeding it. So it is clear that these few persons, whoever they are, thought that if they can feed the Sharks, they can get them to gather them around the group to take photos and make them look like heroes. They didn’t know that, by what they did, they turned the human into prey. What happened with the last five accidents was as a result of changing the Sharks behavior caused by Shark feeding which led to five victims. In Some countries like Australia they have rules for Shark feeding. They do it professionally and
with regulations to avoid any accidents. A question: What about the livestock ship which threw
dead bodies of sheep in the area? Some said that this incident made Sharks more crazy and aggressive.
Dumping livestock in the sea could be a reason, but I believe it is a very small possibility to connect it with the
latest attacks. This incident happened in front if Sharm El Sheikh when a ship threw over 30 dead sheep into
the sea. One hour after they did it, it was reported and immediate action was taken against them, a penalty was
paid and at once, we took all the dead bodies out of the sea. The carcasses had no shark bites. That’s why I would
not focus on this point as a major reason, but absolutely, dumping should be controlled anyway.
So, before we get to the next question we can summarise the above, according to what you said, shark feeding is
the reason of the attacks and fishing is not the reason. Do you deny that illegal fishing is damaging the marine system?
No I can’t deny it, but we can make another article to show you how, with the help of other bodies, we are
protecting our parks from illegal fishing. We would appreciate such interview about the illegal fishing
at another time. As you know, there are some organizations that have their own reasons to accuse you of planning to
slaughter the Sharks in the area to solve the problem. They have said: Contrary to what everybody has been led to believe by South Sinai authorities, the random and indiscriminate killing of sharks continues in the wake of 5 attacks on swimmers off Sharm El Sheikh. The very people entrusted with the protection of this part of the Red Sea are now removing its top predators without any control or logical reason”. Those people –with my respect to all of them- are accusing us of something that has never happened and will never happen. We are not killing sharks, we only caught the individual shark we believe, according to all the information we have including eye witness accounts, was behind the attacks. Sharks are protected in our area and any action will be done according to the international standards and for the sake of sharks, the ecosystem and human safety. We are not in a defendant position to show some people how we work, in fact we are the authority which is in charge of protecting the ecosystem and sharks are one of the most important species for the ecosystem.
That is why we are studying many options to deal with this problem; one of them is called ‘Catch, Tag and Release’
in which the angler attaches a tag to the individual shark, records data such as date, time, place, and type of shark
on a standardized card. This method allow us to have full data of the shark population his area and if we see, according to our research and data, that we should interfere to manage the shark population, we will definitely carry out actions
; first to protect the Shark population, second to provide safety to humans. What about other options like installing nets around the beaches or, as we heard, installing electromagnetic devises to prevent sharks from coming closer to the beaches? These are other options under study, but we gave our vision for the type of nets that could be used and we recommend a type of net used in fish farming as it works like a barrier to stop some kind of fish while not to harming them. Like the other fishing nets in other countries, they are used to block sharks, but in fact they kill sharks and other species. Regarding the electromagnetic devices, I’m not sure this is an idea can be applied in large scales.
Shark researchers and some of the organized shark feeders use such devices. In the end, I would like to reassure everyone that we still have the lowest rate of shark attacks in the world and, for sure, we are working together with the relevant authorities to make sure that these accidents will never repeated and also to make the best plans to protect the ecosystem, including all species of sharks.
Sharm is going green ….. garbage recycling
Did you ever wonder about all those plastic bags that you see flying in the air or hanging on the fences around the airport? Have you ever thought about where all the garbage goes that is produced daily in the city of Sharm el-Sheikh? Have you considered how much danger we provoke as a human beings to our environment and how the damage to the environment bounces directly back to us, impacting our health and our children as well as our businesses? Many people erroneously think that the term ‘waste’ is a negative word, but the opposite is true. And waste is important commercially, industrially., Especially while natural resources continue to decline and prices are rising continuously we can take advantage of waste instead of disposal., We must therefore execute programs to take advantage of municipal waste in development plans and work to draw a natural source of low-cost industries.. All religions have urged for better hygiene for example in Islam Prophet Mohamed says cleanness is faith. Dealing with waste improperly is considered impermissible harm, while the removal or utilization of recycling is charity and should be rewarded by the workers. To not re-use waste is harmful for the community and its wealth. So, what is the fate of our trash after it leaves our house? Where does waste go? Most of us believe that waste simply ‘disappears’ when it leaves our homes, but this belief is far from the truth, so where does the waste go? Landfill sites: used to get rid of waste but lacks simple safety features and thus a threat to the environment and public health. Still, some areas get rid of waste by dumping it in rivers and seas, valleys and water wells or abandoning it on the roadside which attracts rats and flies and destroys the wildlife habitat. It also threatens the safety of water supplies with rain washing away toxic chemicals from waste and contaminating water, the assembly site and the staff working there. Incinerators: While modern incinerators only generate a slight amount of harmful gases and ash, residue must be transferred to the toxic landfills as toxic waste. They are especially harmful if the incinerators need to use a larger amount of energy.
Sanitary landfills:’Healthy Landfills’ are storage locations where a large hole in the ground and sides are lined with plastic to prevent leakage of fluid. A layer of garbage is added each day which putts pressure on the hole, which is then covered with a layer of sand at the end of the day. Pipes are installed for the withdrawal of methane which can then be used in bio-gas power plant operations. But sanitary landfills are not the perfect solution for getting rid of waste.
The main problem faced by sanitary landfills is in a city such as ours with a small area is that the waste does not degrade quickly enough due to the lack of oxygen in the landfills. It is difficult to find new sites for landfills as there is invariably mounting opposition from local residents because of the disturbing smells and so these places do not exist now in Sharm el-Sheikh. The proportions of the components of waste in Egypt are as follows:
Typical Composition of Solid Waste in Egyptian Cities (%) Organic Waste 60, Paper 10, Plastic 12, Glass 3, Metals 2, Textiles 2,Other 11 Source: EEAA. Action Plan for Sanitary Landfills in Egypt, 1998. And the decomposition rate of these components in the environment as follows: Tires 500 years Plastic shopping bags 400 years Aluminum cans 350 years Metal 100 years Chewing Gum 5 years Cigarettes Between one and two years Food waste 3-months We find that this problem affects many aspects of our lives. Most of the high costs caused by inefficient use of resources are wasted as a result of the cost of raw materials and energy as well as non-operational efficiency and process. In Sharm El-Sheikh, we seems to be addicted to the use of plastic bags, we use massive amounts of plastic bags which can end up in the Red Sea where a fish will eat it and die, or in the desert where a rare animal may do the same. In any case, they destroy the environment and the trees as is the case with the rest of the garbage. So the community must support any initiatives in dealing with this waste from collection and sorting to recycling until we make sure its not having a negative impact on our environment, not simply littering around!
I will start a tour of the surrounding environment to see what negative impacts there currently are in this environment, and how we are contributing to them. We can then start to learn how to reduce such damage, and even reverse it in some cases. In the coming issues I will start discussing the waste management issue,where each element of our waste goes and what does it make to our environment along with our lives. We will cover also how the community can turn that damage into benefits
Dolphina controversy
A big debate was recently started in Sharm about the captured dolphins at the Dolphina show.
Some are against and others are in favor of this kind of shows. Here at Sharm Business Magazine, we admit that we made a mistake when we took a stance against the dolphin show. We wrote about what we thought was for the best of the dolphins, because this is all that we care about at the end of the day. After that article we received
comments from the other side, people who were unhappy about the article and, when we met some of them, we thought that we should see one of the Dolphina representatives. In fact, they were just some divers aware of this kind of show and the best comment we got is the one that we published in the last issue. It was as the following: “These kinds of shows are one of the most profitable businesses, and one of the most popular tourist attractions in Sharm. We should spend more time and money focusing on the major problem with dolphins in the world today for example the Japanese catching and eating them, pollution, and fishing nets are killing hundreds of dolphins every day. OVERFISHING. These dolphins, regardless if they were born in the wild or in captivity if given the choice would Never want to go back to the wild!!
They would be more sad than the balidi dogs that you write about on the next page of your magazine. Most dolphins in captivity are treated very well. They have good exercise, they eat the best and most proper fish, and when they are sick they get medicine and antibiotics to heal them”. Sharm Business magazine top management decided to visit Dolphina and investigate to find out the truth. The Chairman of the magazine went there himself and he was welcomed by the Chairman of Dolphina and here is the statement of our Chairman after that visit: “I’m so proud of the high quality medical treatment and the good hygiene that the three dolphins are getting.
I also proud to see young Egyptian trainers doing such a spectacular show like any show I have seen in America or Europe on the TV. I found out that these kind of shows are found anywhere in the world but they only criticize the one in Sharm, regardless of the fact that the one in Sharm is more clean and organized than those
in other countries. I saw that the dolphins are in a good health with bright skin, without any scratches and that made me satisfied about Dolphina”
Freelance divers and work permits
In the last few weeks Sharm Business Magazine has received quite a lot of mails and phone calls and even visitors about one topic. They are all freelance divers inquiring and expressing their concerns regarding the new decision made by the Egyptian Government to reconcile the situation of foreign divers and allow only foreign divers holding work permits to work in Egypt. Some of these divers had reasonable reactions yet others had unacceptable arrogant reactions. For example they said “without us your country’s economy will collapse”. We respect and understand both reactions and decided to meet with the board of CDWS (chamber of diving & water sports). In the meeting CDWS was represented by two gentlemen Mr. Zeyad El Bassel and Mr. Omar Abdel Aziz. Here are the questions: Question) what is going on with the future of foreign freelance divers regarding the new government decree, and what will be the impact of that decree on the diving industry? Answer) There is no doubt that the chamber is the body responsible for the protection of all members. Accordingly we know that foreign labor is essential for the industry especially as we have 26 different languages used in diving and the Egyptian labor market cannot cover all of that. The other important consideration is to make sure that all registered divers are qualified because in diving, one mistake could cost lives not like other travel sectors such as tour guides. If they make mistakes, it will not cost a life. So assurance of safety was, is and always will be our main goal. Lets agree that in any civilized country nobody can work without the right document whether citizen or foreigner. And we all know how difficult it is to get a work permit if you are foreigner in the EU. Actually it’s difficult even to get a Visa to the EU. Previously in Egypt, things were working without rules and regulations and when the government started reforming the country, a lot of measures were taken to reorganize everything. One of these measures was the new labor law and its new regulation regarding the organization of foreign labor in Egypt. The law said that in any establishment, the maximum percent of foreigners should not precede 10% of the total manpower. The Ministry of Manpower also determined all the documents needed to any foreigner to get work permit.In order to protect the diving industry, the Chamber found that this percentage was too low and also found that the procedures needed to issue a work permit to a foreign diver is too much and takes a long time. We decided to address our demands to the Minister of Manpower, asking her to reconsider the whole issue. We reported to her all the negative impacts on diving due to this new law. The Minister was very understanding and made an exception to the diving and petroleum sectors as they have the same issues with foreign labor. The Minster allowed 30% of the registered manpower to be foreigners, not only that but according to our suggestion to ease the issue, she accepted to short cut the procedures to issue a work permit to save the money and the time of every applicant. The previous procedure was to send the diver outside the country then bring him back. This has been canceled. It was costing the diver a lot of money and time to go and come back for no reason.The other procedures which were also costing the diver a very long time were in issuing the AIDS free certificate and the security clearance. We suggested that the diver can apply for it then gets a form (No. 4) proving that he/ she has already applied their documents. Once the chamber sees that form, they will at once issue a permit to practice the profession so that he/ she can start to work without waiting many months for clearance. All the last efforts show what the CDWS have done to ease the business of its members. Some divers are expecting that we should do more, I assure that this is the maximum we can do. This is a country with political policies that needs to help the economy by decreasing unemployment. Q) we believe that everybody has to respect our country’s laws and regulations, from a technical point of view do you think that 30% foreigners is enough to cover the industry or could a collapse or bad impact take place? A) We believe that 30% is enough and no collapse or bad impact will take place, in fact the impact will be good for the quality of diving and also for unemployment in Egypt. When diving centers know that they should issue work permits to all their foreign staff, they will hire only qualified foreign divers according to their needs and the more foreign divers they hire, the more Egyptian labor will work and as we said these two things will increase quality and help unemployment. An important point, every diver holding a work permit can work in the whole of Egypt not only in one center. This means that when a center has a low business season, it can lend its work permitted staff to other centers which have a high business season at that time. Accordingly and if all centers work and cooperate together we will have no business drops and the 30% will be sufficient.. Q) What measures are CDWS taking to fight the diving ‘black market’ which is mainly working and marketing online? A) We know that there are some people working from rented apartments and building sites to sell diving trips. Those people can’t work alone after being discovered by CDWS. They need a registered center to operate their deals. According to the Egyptian law, nobody is allowed to bring tourists in unless they have a recognised, registered establishment. So those people are violating the law and any center who is dealing with them means that they too are helping to violate the law. We have our ways to trace both the black market and the associated center. Once we catch one, we warn the center not to deal with that company any more otherwise they will be subjected to a penalty. We also have a blacklist on our site telling the world the names of the members on that black market. We hope that this interview calms the debate and makes the foreign divers understand that we are reforming the country, not kicking foreigners out as some of them said. We assure you here at Sharm Business Magazine that we welcome any foreigner respecting our rules and laws to work, invest or do business. The only advice we give to some foreign divers is that they should not trust and deal with some firms claiming that they can issue them a work permit in fraudulent ways. These firms are misleading them and will cause trouble.
New governor, new Mayor and may be a glimmer of hope!!!
I was surprised recently to get some calls and comments from some gentlemen accusing me of being the kind of writer who only shows the dark side of the city. They were concerned that it could affect negatively the image of the country and I should show the bright side too. Maybe they are right…but let me tell them that we are in a developing country which needs a lot of reforms and these reforms will never come alone unless the nation sees itself in the mirror and tells itself the truth whether it’s ugly or always the most beautiful. So what am I suppose to write, that everything is great and clean, streets are paved, no more garbage in the streets, no corruption, no Taxi hassle and no street hassle, the animals are treated well and nobody poisons them, no plastic bag pollution problem and no marine pollution………………….. I love my country and maybe I love it more than those who just talk too much and do nothing. I believe that credibility is the only way to reform a country and we should be proud that, at least in Egypt, we can write the truth without any interference of Government control and we are the only nation in the Middle East with partially free media. I have been waiting for more than one year to see any achievement to write about and I have finally found it. When I see that Sharm business magazine is helping to change something, I feel that all our work was not for nothing. I can’t claim that we are the only reason for change, but at least one of the reasons. For example the garbage dump which was on Sea Street in Hadaba has been wiped clean after my last article also please take a look at how Rowayssat has been turned to a better and cleaner place after the campaign we did with the help of some residents there. The main road of Hadaba was another issue that we focused on to show the bad impact of a main road under construction for more than a year on Hadaba residents and now finally it’s finished. We have to say that we have started a new Era with the new Governor and normally we wish to see a glimmer of hope. Frankly speaking, I see more effort and work to restore the city as it used to be. I would only like to give my advice to the new Mayor of Sharm El sheikh to make sure that crossing the main road of Hadaba after they doubled it is not a life risk. I especially see many kids crossing that road in front of the schools. In addition I would like to show the following photos and hope that the city officials put it into consideration. Let me appreciate the efforts made by the the Rowayssat leader for what he did to fight the garbage phenomenon and make it a clean and better place, also I’m so happy that they have allocated a parking place for the buses in Rowayssat so that the residents don’t have to suffer anymore from the sound and the heavy smoke pollution. Hopefully they could do the same in Hadaba.