Opinion

Merge the two ministries

In any country, the number of crises should decrease as the number of ministries increases, because this means more ability to control.
 
But the opposite happens in Egypt, where we have as many as 33 ministers, while countries like the United States, China and Japan have less than 20 ministers. These countries have a limited number of ministries, yet an unlimited number of creative solutions to crises.
 
It seems Egypt is tolerant. For example, the private mobile phone companies have the biggest share of the cake, while the national company has little left.
 
The same applies to the aviation and tourism sectors, as foreign airlines and travel agents organize trips to Egypt and buy the whole season for cheap prices, while the national airline and travel agencies are left with little.
 
The ministries of aviation and tourism were a single entity that was arbitrarily turned into two separate entities by Fouad Sultan, the former tourism minister. This wrong decision negatively affected both the national airline and the local travel agencies. 
 
Linking tourism and aviation in one entity may restore both industries and protect them from monopolies. It would also reduce costs and improve efficiency. In fact, both industries depend on each other largely.
 
There are 1.5 million people working directly in tourism and another 1.5 million working indirectly. Also, those two industries have huge assets, facilities, cadres and expertise that help generate quick profit in hard currency. So, what are we waiting for?
 
We have one-third of the world's antiquities (Pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic). We have the last surviving marvel of the Seven Wonders. We have Mount Sinai where God spoke to Moses. We have museums, natural reserves and oases. We have beaches on the Read Sea and the Mediterranean. 
 
We have all this, while our share of the one billion tourists world market cake is nothing but a few bites.
 
The problem is not the fall of the Russian plane from the sky to the ground. It is our inability to come up with bright ideas that take us from the ground up to the sky.
 
Merge the two ministries and let us work.
 
 
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
 

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