Port Said governorate demolishes summer compound despite legal battle with residents

Governorate authorities began demolishing people’s villas and the local facilities that serve the Fardous tourist village — a beach compound in west Port Said — last Tuesday, two villa owners told Mada Masr.

One of them, Yomna, said that police and demolition workers arrived on Monday to inform residents they had 72 hours to remove their belongings — but demolition work began the very next day and was still ongoing at the time of writing.

Owners said they were shocked the demolitions are being carried out despite ongoing legal action by residents challenging the legality of their eviction by the Port Said Governorate, which has made no secret of its intention to clear the area for redevelopment plans involving international investors.

Fearing damage to their properties or theft of their belongings, some residents of the compound — which currently consists of 1,167 villas and chalets, as well as a managerial headquarters, company club buildings, an infirmary and other facilities — have begun sleeping in their cars outside their properties, Yomna said. 

The electricity supply to the compound has been cut, she said, making it difficult for people to retrieve their furniture and personal possessions from their homes or holiday chalets after dark, when demolition workers have finished for the day.

Residents also feel threatened by what Yomna described as “thugs” who have entered the area to scavenge woodwork, wiring and other materials from demolished or abandoned buildings. She said residents feel authorities are failing to protect their interests: “Police are only here to make sure there will be no opposing protests.”

Images shared online show several villas already reduced to rubble. Among them, according to Yomna, is the Maritime Contracts club building — despite a 2021 court ruling, reviewed by Mada Masr, that ordered its preservation.

Both Yomna and Badr, another property owner in Fardous, said the ongoing demolitions began despite residents’ ongoing legal case over land rights, which is still pending a court ruling scheduled for May 17.

Fardous was established in 1990 on land leased under a usufruct agreement by the governorate to various tenants, who pooled funds from union, bank, and company employees to construct 700 chalets and villas by 1996.

Yomna described how the character of the area evolved over time. “Sure, some well-off people were able to afford purchasing chalets a long time ago,” she said, “ but people could rent them at low prices. It was all for low- and middle-income families.”

“It had its own identity,” Yomna explained. “For Port Saidis, when we wanted a summer getaway, a change of scenery, we’d go to Fardous for a day trip.” Over time, many middle-income families turned their properties into their homes. “For example, our place there became my brother's apartment,” Yomna added.

However, trouble in paradise began in 2019, according to Badr. The then-governor of Port Said, Major General Adel al-Ghadban, attempted to quadruple the usufruct fees villa owners paid to the governorate, raising the rate from LE3 to LE12 per square meter, well above the amount specified in the contract. 

The owners launched a legal dispute against these orders, but Badr said they ultimately reached an out-of-court agreement to collect and pay the requested fees, totalling LE35 million. However, the court later ruled that the fees should have been only LE25 million.

Ghadban didn’t stop there, though. He told owners that their contracts had expired in 2019 and attempted to transfer ownership of the land to the executive body of the Port Said Free Zone. 

In response, the owners initiated a new legal battle, according to Badr, asserting that the usufruct contract stipulates an open-ended agreement as long as the compound remains in good condition.

Yomna further explained to Mada Masr that the contract for each owner specifies that usufruct rights are automatically renewed every 20 years and that the compound cannot be reclaimed by the governorate or demolished unless its facilities begin to fall into disrepair.

The case presented by lawyer Hesham al-Esawy on behalf of the owners, which Mada Masr reviewed, argues that the 2021 court ruling, which upheld the validity of the usufruct contract for the Maritime Contracts Company club building within the compound, sets a precedent. The same terms, according to Esawy, should apply to all buildings in the compound, as they have similar contracts to the company club.

Despite the ongoing legal dispute, Badr said residents believe that former governor Ghadban had informed the Cabinet that both Fardous and the nearby Gameel beach villas, also built on land leased by the governorate under usufruct terms, would be empty by 2019.

The owners said they have been appealing on social media to the Presidency and Cabinet to intervene, hoping the Cabinet wasn't fully informed of the legal battle before approving the demolitions. 

But when they approached Ghadban’s successor, Moheb Khalil, he told them the matter was beyond his control and that he was simply following decisions made by Ghadban and the Cabinet.

While Ghadban initially said the area would be transferred to the Port Said Economic Zone, the government’s vision has shifted toward a more urban development for the area.

A 2019 presidential decree assigned 3075 feddans “privately owned by the state” in west Port Said to the New Urban Communities Authority for a new settlement, with a 2023 Housing Ministry plan detailing the area’s future development.

Khalil confirmed in a January interview that the entire west Port Said area has been allocated to the New Urban Communities Authority to implement an integrated urban project, including a global tourism zone, a modern urban zone, and a production projects zone. “Additionally, an international tourism investor will establish a state-of-the-art tourism project in the Gamil Chalets area,” Khalil said.

Gameel was demolished last year under similar circumstances, one of Ghadban’s final acts as governor, with the owners' pleas to extend their contracts ignored.

The owners of properties in the Fardous court case are continuing their legal battle, with a ruling session scheduled for May 17.

Yomna expressed concern that the rush to demolish before the court ruling could allow the governorate to argue in court that the buildings have already fallen into disrepair, justifying the termination of usufruct rights.

In the meantime, Esawy has submitted a request that the court either order the governorate to halt the demolitions or, if the land is really being handed to investors on the grounds that this “serves public interest,” that it make good on legal requirements to compensate those whose land it is confiscating.