Reconciliation requests submitted by owners of unlicensed buildings in Egypt amount to 2.8M

CAIRO – 17 May 2022: Minister of Local Development Mahmoud Shaarawy stated in a Cabinet meeting Monday that the number of reconciliation requests submitted by owners of unlicensed buildings amounted to 2.8 million.

The deadline to submit such requests was March 31 so that the documents are currently being processed. Nevertheless, not all owners of unlicensed buildings filed for legalization.

In that regard, Associate to Minister of Local Development and Spokesperson Khaled Qassem stated in March 2021 that a joint committee had been formed with the Ministry of Housing to decide the penalties that will be imposed on violators.

In a similar context, The committee in charge of eliminating encroachments on state-owned lands stated in September that 75 percent of those have been removed over 18 phases since May 2017 when the campaign was launched by President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

That means 2.5 million feddans (one feddan equals 4,500 square meters) of agricultural lands, and 188 million square meters of non-agricultural lands have been cleared. 

The committee also clarified that 37,000 squatters had reconciled, while the requests of 44,000 others were still being examined.