Sinai News

On July 2nd, while we had our meeting with the Electricity Holding Company, some more documents were uploaded to the European Investment Bank’s website. Among them the public hearing from April 15.
How come that we find in the public hearing part of our online petition copied word by word?
Keep in mind that our online petition went public only on May 21, and some letters of complaints to various bodies were written earlier but not previous to May 17.

Mr. Essam Saad Ed-Din Khalil (EEAA: Director General for Ras Mohamed Natural Protectorate)
Nuweiba is one of the most picturesque parts of the whole southern Sinai peninsula, has an excellent and unique tourism potential, is home to two major Sinai bedouin tribes, and has an almost unique, relatively undisturbed underwater marine life.
Apart from the obvious enormous detrimental effects such a project will have on the local environment and population during the construction period, once operational, the plant will have a negative impact on the quality of air, will reduce the level of sunlight, increase noise pollution and, above all, will damage seriously and irreparably the marine life and coral reefs that lie all along the east coast of Nuweiba adjacent to where the plant is planned to be built.
Such a large power plant will also cause the eventual demise of the local tourist industry and subsequently force the closure of the hotels, dive centers and other tourist service providers in the area, resulting in the loss of jobs for the many workers within the tourism industry and the loss of livelihood for the various local businesses that service the tourism industry in Nuweiba. Tourism is a major source of income for the local Bedouin tribes so the effects on the loss of this industry is simply unimaginable.
Check it out:
http://www.eib.org/attachments/pipeline/20070382_eia7_en.pdf (page 10-11)
and Stop the Destruction of Nuweiba and its Coral Reefs Petition