11
The Black Clouds Invade Countryside in Egypt
“Hazards of pollution in Mit Ghamer”
Dealing with the issues of environment has not any more been of luxury. The
defending also on the environment in which we are live has not any more been of
hurly-burly or vociferousness. On the contrary, doing that in front of the
flagrant violations to which our environment expose has been at all levels as
reserving of our life.
Any nation of the world would not be able to really enter the third millennium but through clean environment that should be free from pollution. Thus, the destiny of human race is undoubtedly correlated with the environment in which it live. Not only the human race, but also all the living beings that live on the earth. This mainly refers to the variety and multiplicity of the environment pollutants in this area, where any disorder may occur to a ring of this linked chain would fall us in a vacuous circle.
The issue of environment has been intricate because the violation that daily occur to it and the dangerous resulted of them against human and all the living beings that live under the same environment. This is the main finding we could extracted from the field research we operated in some city lies in the Delta in Egypt’s countryside, exactly in Meet Ghamer city and also the nearby villages that belong to the same district.
We have selected this specific area for compare the environmental reality in the city and village and also for the big area of that city as well as for the big number of the nearby villages that reach to 41. This is besides about 66 manors and small villages that called (Naga’) that all form 15 rural local main units.
Through this research we found many contradictions between the reality of environment in the city and the village despite both are suffering the same tragedy. But it seems that the size of violations that occur in the villages of Meet Ghamr are more flagrant because the people there used to deal with these issues as a natural part of their life. The exception can only be found in some complaints that used to be sent by some inhabitants of those villages.
This in undoubtedly refers to the level of awareness among the simple people who most of them are illiterate. The issue that moved us to pose this question: is the illiteracy whether educationally or concerning reading and writing and the related problems that those people are suffering from have been another sort of environmental deterioration in the Egyptian rural areas?
Through this indication we can realize the correlation between the level of awareness and the practicing or executing the development and raising the standard of their living which would not achieved but through a real participation from all the people are involved in this complicated issue.
Through this research we also found that the environmental deterioration is also correlated with the phenomenon of woman and child labor in one hand and the absence of rights and the appropriate tools by which they can confront the violation they face in the other hand. The violations that begin from the absence of any social or health insurance passing through the absence of work contracts, and the low rates of wages ends to the work injuries that usually result from the absence of any vocational security means.
The problem that leads to several deaths and cases of amputation to the workers of women and children who are also lack to the appropriate training on the whatever they practice of works. This is besides the other innocent people who sometimes face the dangerous diseases because of the high rate of pollution in this area.
On the other hand, there are other factors are that double the danger of pollution, those factors consist of extending of pollution effects to the hand s of consumers of those commodities and products that pass through the various resources of pollution. The products of aluminum for instance, have extreme dangerous components that reach to the consumers and users of them.
The pollution of course does not consist in the air and water only, but it also extends to the foods, where the circle of pollution is extending day by day to reach every things used or consumed by the humans or the animals. So, escaping away from this malignant circle does need to collective efforts from all the individuals whether at the level of governmental organizations or the NGOs in order to get out from this horrible circle.
Those notes have been found by LCHR through the field research operated in Meet Ghamr despite we are still realizing that we did not reach the final opinion about these complicated phenomena that overwhelmingly exist in this area and the adjacent villages. Thus while we did not survey all the resources of pollution, we monitored the most important and dangerous ones that we mention here in the second chapter of this report. Whereas we show in that chapter that there are several factories and small workshops produce many dangerous and hazardous effects against the health of citizens in that area.
In the same time, we manipulate in the third chapter another resources of pollution and the resulted risks of that sort of pollution that is related to the water and the wastes that used to be thrown into the water currents. But we realized that we can not give a picture about the resources of pollution without giving an overview on the nature and kind of the place through the figures, statistics and the other available information on the reality of this city and the villages in the first chapter.
Then we finish the report with final notes and recommendations that we think have the priority of dealing with this phenomenon in order to limit its hazards and guarantee the natural level of clearness of environment in future. This is, as we mentioned above should be the right entrance through which the process of development can be practiced on ground in future.