Cairo, November 3 (BNA) A spokesman said that the Egyptian President ordered his administration today, Wednesday, to start moving its offices next month to a new sprawling administrative capital in the desert outside Cairo.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi directed the government to start a six-month trial period to operate from the new complex from December 1, according to his spokesman Bassam Rady.
The $45 billion city is the largest of the mega projects that Sisi has launched since taking office in 2014.
It is being built on 170,000 acres 28 miles (about 45 kilometers) east of Cairo and about twice its size.
It is planned to accommodate 6.5 million people.
The government has said the new capital is needed to accommodate Cairo’s population boom, which will double to 40 million by 2050, according to the Associated Press.
The president also said that the new capital, and other projects ranging from new roads and residential complexes to the expansion of the Suez Canal, are attracting investors and creating job opportunities for more than 100 million people in the country.
The city will house the presidency, cabinet, parliament, and ministries. Planners promise a 21-mile public park, an airport, an opera house, a sports complex, and 20 skyscrapers, including Africa’s tallest, at 345 meters (about 1,132 feet).
The state newspaper Al-Ahram reported that the government had planned to relocate 52,300 government employees to the new capital by mid-2020, but its plans were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
President el-Sisi said earlier this year that moving the government to the new capital would “herald a new era of modern government work.”
He was referring to the advanced technology used to build government offices there.
The change of seat of power outside Cairo would be the first since the Islamic conquest in the seventh century.
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