Victims of Egypt’s Beheira flooding to be evacuated to new village

Egypt is to set up a new residential village in the Nile Delta’s Beheira governorate to accommodate locals harmed by the past week’s flooding that has devastated parts of the city and forced dozens to leave their homes.

Twenty-five people were killed, either from drowning or electrocution caused by heavy rain striking mainly in villages in the province’s Wadi Al-Natroun valley.

Meteorologists expect rainfall to continue until the end of the week.

Hundreds of schools have been forced to shut down due to the floods and dozens of locals were forced to evacuate their homes. Large swathes of homeland in the region have been devastated as well.

Beheira’s provincial governor Mohamed Sultan said a 14-feddan city will be established on state-owned land in Wadi Al-Natroun to accommodate those affected by the floods, mainly in Oufouna village, which was hit the hardest by recent storms.

The new village will be equipped with all facilities including schools, medical units and farmlands, state news agency MENA quoted Sultan as saying.

Many of those whose houses were devastated in the past rainstorm have been provided makeshift residences until the new houses in the village are available, according to MENA.

The flooding and the deaths in Beheira and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria have caused outrage among the public, provoking criticism of governmental negligence and the cities’ poor infrastructure.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi as a result has announced that LE1 billion from a development fund he created last year will be allocated for improving drainage and agriculture systems in both cities.

source: Ahram online