Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights in cooperation with the Foundation of Man for Social Development held a new seminar for the citizens of Dar el Salam district of Cairo Governorate on July 8, 2012.
The aim of the seminars is to raise awareness of decentralization and its social and political variables, as well as monitoring and discussing the problems associated with the citizens to public services and the role of local authorities.
The workshop comes within the framework of the activities of the citizen's voice project 2, which is implemented by Maat in cooperation with the Foundation for the Future. It seeks to build the capacity of local community parties to deal with the variables associated with decentralization so as to improve the quality of public services provided to citizens and activate people's monitoring over the work of local authorities.
More than 70 citizens from ​​Dar el Salam as well as a number of the staff of the local units and departments of the service in addition to the leadership of the operational work of the district have been participated. Professor Ibrahim Saber, head of Dar el Salam district, leads the seminar. The seminar addressed several issues related to problems faced by the personnel departments, which prevent them from providing quality services to citizens and non-application of decentralization optimally.
Among the most important problems that citizens presented were the lack of garbage bins, the lack of interest of local administrations in renewing the sewage networks, the closed streets of street vendors, as it was agreed that the neighborhood’s revenues would be used to develop the area and address these problems as much as possible during the current fiscal year.
The head of the district referred that they put forward these issues in their meeting with the President, and took a promise to help them to apply district in dealing with offenses and apply the law to offenders.
For the problem of street vendors, head of the district indicated to near completion of the second phase of the market of Dar el Salam in order to accommodate street vendors, and will be coordinated with Maat and active civil society organizations in the district that the street vendors will take advantage of this market