While some government institutions claim that they are staging campaigns to stop the stealing of state-owned land, vast areas of land were seized by some people of influence, who put their hands on vast areas of desert and farm land for a few pounds per acre, and then sold those lands for billions of pounds!! Despite the statements and allegations of the government, influential and corrupt people still from a grand corruption alliance. They managed to size the lands of entire cities to their own benefit, threatening the country's wealth and resources with waste. These polices announce every day the ruin of the country!! At the same time, those corrupt people at state continue to violate the rest of the rights of the poor and the small farmers. There is no better example of this than the complaints which the LCHR received from some farmers of the villages of El-Notron Valley in which they stated that the Ministry of Agriculture had earlier given the farmers who were wronged by the application of the landlord and tenant law 2 acres and 12 carats of land, and a house which consists of two rooms for the amount of E.P. 15000. This amount was to be paid over a period of thirty years. The State has also given young graduates five acres and a house for the amount of E.P. 11000 which was to be paid over a period of thirty years.
After those young graduates and wronged farmers have sold those lands to small farmers in the area of El-Notron Valley, after they had difficulties in reclaiming it, due to their poverty, and the needs of the land and life in the desert of the valley to an assisting income, in order for the land to produce, and after the small farmers sold all their belongings to pay the due premiums of the land to the ministry, and after they have given their effort and money to transform the barren land into productive agricultural land, and after years of sweat and effort, and after the barren land began to transform into a productive agricultural land which produces corps like peanuts, corn, tomatoes and other corps for the benefit of the country and the small farmers, the farmers were surprised by a committee from the Ministry surveying and counting them for the propose of reselling the land to them at the price of 65 thousand pounds for the land, and 15 thousand pounds for the infrastructure, in addition to 30 thousand pounds for each house. The Ministry has estimated that the money which will be collected from the small-scale farmers would amount to 4 billion pounds in the area of El-Notron Valley, in an illegal attempt by the government to circumvent the rights of small farmers and exploit them. The government imposes taxes on them because it knows that they can not leave the land after the have reclaimed it and after they have paid all their belongings in order to achieve this, therefore they have to comply with the resolutions issued by the government representatives, whom the looting and robbing of the poor and small farmers has become their first priorities, while leaving the land for influential people and businessmen to plunder and sell for billions of pounds, after buying it for nothing in reality in return for bribing corrupt government employees !!. The LCHR demands that the Minister of Agriculture cancel the decision of the pricing committee, and that it give the land to the small farmers, as they have paid its due premiums. The LCHR demands that the officials allow small farmers to form their own independent associations to defend their interests, after the reclamation association in the area of El-Notron Valley tried to expel the farmers from the land and force them to pay twice the price of the land in violation of the law.
The LCHR calls upon the civil society organizations and members of the People's Assembly and Shura Council to unite in solidarity with the farmers of El-Notron Valley in order to protect their rights to a safe farming, proper work opportunities, and a decent living.
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