Egypt's leader orders government to move to new capital

CAIRO — Egypt’s president connected Wednesday ordered his medication to commencement moving its offices adjacent period to a sprawling caller administrative superior successful the godforsaken extracurricular Cairo, a spokesperson said.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has directed the authorities to statesman a six-month proceedings play of moving from the caller analyzable starting Dec. 1, according to his spokesman, Bassam Radi.

The $45 cardinal metropolis is biggest of the mega-projects el-Sissi has launched since taking bureau successful 2014. It is being built connected 170,000 acres astir 28 miles (about 45 kilometers) eastbound of Cairo and astir doubly its size. It is planned to location 6.5 cardinal people.

Critics person called the caller superior a vanity project, arguing its outgo could person been amended enactment to rebuilding the wrecked system and refurbishing Cairo.

But the authorities has argued that the caller superior is needed to sorb the booming colonisation of Cairo, which volition treble to 40 cardinal by 2050. The president besides said that the caller capital, and different projects ranging from caller roads and lodging complexes to a Suez Canal expansion, pull investors and make jobs for the country’s much than 100 cardinal people.

The metropolis volition location the presidency, Cabinet, Parliament and ministries. Planners committedness a 21-mile-long nationalist park, an airport, an opera house, a sports analyzable and 20 skyscrapers, including Africa’s highest, astatine 345 meters (about 1,132 feet).

The state-run Al-Ahram regular reported that the authorities had planned to relocate 52,300 authorities employees to the caller superior by mid-2020, but its plans were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

El-Sissi said earlier this twelvemonth that moving the authorities to the caller superior would “herald a caller receptor of modern authorities work.” He was referring to precocious exertion utilized to physique authorities offices there.

The displacement of the spot of powerfulness extracurricular Cairo volition beryllium the archetypal since the Muslim conquest successful the 7th Century.