The predicament of Ezbet Basheer and Ezbet Abdel-Tawwab Hamzawi

Defying reason Mutual courtesies and compliments are normal, affectionate outcomes of personal friendships, but once they spill over into public life they become the epitome of corruption.
I have before me a complaint from the residents of the two hamlets of Ezbet Basheer and Ezbet Abdel-Tawwab Hamzawi, both of which lie in Tamiya, Fayoum, against from the board chairman of Fayoum drinking water and sanitary drainage company. For more than ten years the residents of both hamlets suffered from severe shortages of drinking water. A 5km-long pipeline supplied them with the water which came from a source lower in level than the hamlets, and should have thus been pumped to a higher level. Since the water was never pumped up, and since the line supplied the heavily populated village of Dawwar Gibla before it reached them, the residents of the two hamlets were left with no more than a drizzle.
Some two years ago the hamlets’ residents applied to Fayoum governor for approval of the erection of a new pipeline to solve the water shortage. The proposed one was a mere two kilometres long, ran downstream and supplied no other users. The residents easily obtained all official approvals required, since their demand was obviously justified, and the line was erected by the Fayoum drinking water and sanitary drainage company in mid-2006.
But someone was unhappy about the project. The owner of the land which overlooks the dust road through which the pipeline passed went to court complaining that the line was erected on his property. His claim was contested by the local government of Tamiya, which explained in a report issued in July 2007 that the 2km-long 4m-wide dust road had been a public road used by various vehicles for more than a half-century. Fayoum’s department of roads and transport also wrote in November 2007 that the road was charted on official survey maps since 1901, and accommodated electricity and fresh water lines. The road, the department said, was an irrevocable public utility, and was moreover open for traffic. And in December 2007 the State commissioners report stated that “Roads, streets, canals, bridges, and suchlike, which are used for public benefit, are considered public property. Since the road in question has been used by the inhabitants of the land and their animals for over half a century, and since this period and such use justify signifying the road as a public benefit utility, the erection of the water line under the road was a sound decision. Accordingly, the plaintiff’s case ought to be rejected.” Basing on all this data, the prosecution of Tamiya decided that the landowner could claim no rights as far as the road is concerned.
This should have been the end of the dispute. But the landowner was not satisfied, so he persuaded the chairman of Fayoum drinking water and sanitary drainage company to re-route the water line through the original long path which was the cause of the water shortage. Strangely, it was that same chairman who testified that the disputed pipeline had been executed along the optimum path.
The matter appears to defy reason. An official investigation into the matter is due, since it appears to have departed from the context of a legal dispute and turned into a show of force of who is strong enough to impose his will. I cannot in any way see any harm in laying a pipeline underneath a road, close to other utility lines which had lain there for more than 50 years, and of which everybody, including the landowner, benefited. What is it that we do not know that makes the chairman go out of his way to grant the landowner his wish?

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