Egyptian ministers’ statements on public budget raise controversy
The ministers of education and health have criticized the Egyptian Ministry of Finance for failing to provide the required budget, which prompted the government to ban public statements by some ministers.
Two Egyptian ministers have made critical statements about the government allocating insufficient funds to the country’s education and health sectors last month, triggering talk about an imminent Cabinet reshuffle and pushing newspapers not to publish any further statements by a number of ministers.
On May 12, Minister of Education Tarek Shawki was attending a parliamentary Planning and Budget Committee meeting when he criticized the Ministry of Finance’s non-cooperation with the Ministry of Education to fund its educational development program.
"We have to exploit the presence of a political leadership that is fully convinced of the development of education. If we are not, we will have double problems. The Ministry of Finance hardly gives us a penny as it is,” Shawki said during the meeting.
He added, “Whatever funding we ask for, we get less. Moreover, the number of students multiply and the development of the curricula costs us millions. If we want the funding to continue we have to inject money.”
