Statement regarding the court case filled by Habi Center for Environmental Rights against H.E. Minister of Interior and others regarding the Black Cloud.
Building on the efforts that the Habi Center for Environmental Rights (HCER) has initiated three years ago to confront the acute air pollution problem in Cairo (which is referred to in the media by the Black Cloud), the HCER has filled a court case number 1898 dated October 22, 2002 requesting the Minister of Interior to issue a decree that will entail measuring the exhaust gases of Cairo vehicles.
This is to prevent vehicles that violate the norms stated in the article # 37 of the executive legislation of the Law # 4 of the year 1994. This same article has obliged the Minister of Interior to issue such a decree for all the governorates. Unfortunately the decree has been issued only for two governorates (Giza and Kaliubia) and not even to Cairo which is the most affected governorate due to its enormous amount of vehicles (about 2 million vehicles daily). In vain, the HCER has lobbying repeatedly for issuing such a decree for Cairo. This eventually led the HCER to revert to the court of law.
The legal case has been processed in an extremely slowly manner due to the government lawyers manipulations. However, a date for the legal case has been set to be on November 2nd, 2004. Unfortunately, the government representative manipulated further in order to lengthen the case duration with the pretext of submitting additional documents. The court case has been postponed to the date of December 21, 2004.
Cairo, November 6, 2004.
