Agriculture Minister Adle Al-Beltagy has decided to form a taskforce that would appraise lands on the Cairo-Alexandria road in order to oblige owners to legalize their land ownerships before the end of the year.
The minister said that would “the last chance” for legalizing land ownerships, maintaining that the state will show no leniency in retrieving its lands”, calling upon illegal holders to abide by the laws adopted by the state to settle those violations.
A confidential report has revealed that the total of lands that are either illegally encroached upon or occupied by 350 businessmen and 650 corporations at various desert areas stand at 2.968 million feddans.
Senior government sources estimated the aggregate of dues owed to the state in return for those violations by more than LE150 billion, an amount representing the cost legalizing the statuses of lands used for investment purposes rather than agriculture.
A report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in September revealed that the number of encroachment cases on agricultural land reached 1,250,000 until 1 September on a total of 51,800 acres.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
