I was watching it being taken down day by day, as I drive on the 6th of October bridge into town. It’s another example of how public funds are squandered by Nazif’s brilliant technocrats that Bush keeps expressing admiration for:
One minute it was there, the next it was gone. Pedestrians or drivers could easily notice that the recently erected Ramses Garage has now been leveled to the ground. The garage was built to solve some of the parking problems in this crowded part of the city, right in front of the historical Egyptian Railway Station.
“They were building it for almost two years,” says Am Tareq, a kiosk-owner who makes his living next to the Railway Authority. “Now they tore it down in two months.” Except for a couple of underground floors, the once five-storey building can no longer be seen — a result of Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif’s decree of August 2006 permitting its demolition.
The decree, according to an insider speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity, cost the Railway Authority LE32 million that was extracted from the Transportation Ministry’s annual budget. But the reasons behind it were not made clear by authorities; some claim the garage’s location ruined the historical beauty of the Railway Authority while others declared it a security hazard due to its position adjacent to the Sixth of October Bridge.