Minister of Higher Education Mostafa Mossad said Saturday afternoon that a solution for the Nile University and Zewail City for Science and Technology crisis would be announced in a statement by the Ministry of Higher Education within hours.
During a press conference Saturday, Mossad said that some legal aspects were being reviewed before the solution would be announced. He added that a ministerial committee has been examining the issue for two weeks and the details would be announced in the statement.
Nile University students staged protests last month inside the Zewail City of Science and Technology demanding that the campus remain in Zewail City, where many of its expensive laboratories remain unused. In response, the Cabinet formed a ministerial committee to study the students' demands and work out a solution.
Nile University was established on land originally allocated for the Zewail City of Science and Technology project in 2000 under the government of former Prime Minister Atef Ebed.
The state-owned newspaper Al-Akhbar said that former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif allocated the same plot of land to the Nile University project in 2006. Nazif's move had been criticized as an effort to counter Zewail's popularity, a crucial matter for the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
After the 25 January revolution, the government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf allocated the land to Zewail City and relocated Nile University, whose campus had already been built on that land, to Smart Village.
Prime Minister Hesham Qandil has also gotten involved in the dispute, and recently held a meeting with Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail discussing the protests ahead of the new academic year.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
