Sisi charity fund to use LE21 million to release prisoners in debt

The Long Live Egypt fund announced that it would allocate LE21 million to pay off the debts of detainees of debt and to enable them to find jobs privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on Tuesday.

The project is a collaboration with Masr al-Kheir NGO which has a running program for debt detainees and has already succeeded in securing the release of 30,000 detainees, Ali Gomaa, Islamic scholar and the head of the board NGO’s board, told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Monthly pensions for those unable to work will also be issued through the Ministry of Social Solidarity, which often facilitates the process of paying off debts undertaken by charitable organizations such as Masr al-Kheir.

The Long Live Egypt fund was created by presidential decree in July 2014 with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi calling on Egyptians to donate in order to support their economy. He inaugurated the initiative by donating half of his salary and assets.

Donations are made into an account at the Central Bank of Egypt.

Companies and businessmen have made public announcements of donations worth hundreds of millions of pounds, but no figures regarding total donations have been officially announced. Media estimates put the number at LE9 billion.

The board of the fund announced in June its funding of several projects including building a center to treat Hepatitis C in Luxor by 2020 and a LE1 billion project to develop the area of Duweiqa, which will be half-funded by the state and half by the fund. 

Sohair Awad, program coordinator of Masr al-Kheir, previously explained to Mada Masr that around 25 percent of those who are jailed for not paying their debts are women.

“At Masr al-Kheir, we focus on the poorest segments of the population, those whose debts amount to LE10,000 or less,” she said.

Beyond the work of Masr al-Kheir and other charitable organizations, alongside sporadic state efforts — such as this collaboration and the collecting of donations during Ramadan — there is no state plan for women’s economic empowerment, says director of the Egyptian Ombudsman’s Office for Gender Equality and Women’s Rights, activist Fatima Khafagy.