CAIRO, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has recently adopted a comprehensive strategy to control the population growth that poses huge pressure on the country's resources and budget.
Egyptian Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala al-Saeed said on Dec. 3 that a plan will be implemented at the beginning of 2021 to control the population growth rates.
"The plan will provide free sustainable means of birth control, setting up an appropriate mechanism to reach every woman in Egypt," she said, adding that the plan also includes positive incentives to control the population growth.
A program will be prepared for employing women in the provinces where the population growth rates are high, the minister noted.
"The plan will also focus on educational curricula and awareness messages on family planning and required legislation, as well as designating a working group in each ministry to implement this plan," she added.
"Egypt has a historic opportunity to face the overpopulation problem because the political leadership has given much attention to that serious issue," said Amro Hassan, former secretary-general of the National Population Council.
It is a priority for the government because it constitutes great pressure on natural resources and the state budget, Hassan told Xinhua.
He highlighted four factors to make the plan successful including political willingness, a disciplined institutional framework, a strategy, and funding.
Egypt's 14-fold population increase between 1882 and 2017 has created a "national problem," he said, stressing that an urgent solution has to be adopted by the government.
Over the 135-year period, the number of people living in the country had jumped from 6.7 million to 94.8 million, according to official statistics.
The rise of the population had impacted the individual's share of education, health, and available resources, Hassan added.
The Egyptian National Council stated on its website that a family planning project will be launched in early 2021, to help in cutting the population in Egypt by 1 million.
The population growth has three dimensions that should be solved to control the birth rates, Hala Mansour, professor of sociology with Ain Shamas University said.
The population density, which is related to the increase in fertility rates, the quality of the population, which is the social, cultural and health level, and the distribution of the population, she explained.
Programs to limit population increase have succeeded to a great extent in middle-class families, which has actually reduced fertility rates while caring about health, education, and investment in children.
However, the poor class gives more priority to birth in abundance, because children for them are a source of livelihood, Mansour pointed out.
Waleed Gab-Allah, an economic expert, said that the previous plans failed because "it lacks continuity and was targeting certain limited people."
He called on the government to adopt strict measures against the employment of kids to discourage the families to give birth to more.
But the application of the plan should be done smoothly without challenging the social norms as a large segment of people believes that having more kids is favorable at the religious level, he added. Enditem
