The Socialist Popular Alliance Party announced a campaign dubbed "We will not pay" on Thursday. It will urge people not to pay electricity bills in response to repeated power outages since the beginning of Ramadan.
The campaign will be launched on Thursday evening in Cairo's Imbaba neighborhood by organizing human chains to urge people refrain from paying for electricity as well as garbage bills, the party said in a statement.
It aims to press the government to provide electricity and clean the streets of garbage.
The party denounced on its Facebook page Thursday the accumulation of garbage in the streets and power outages in poor areas — contrary to upscale neighborhoods.
It added that the people live at the mercy of arbitrary and biased executive authority decisions.
The party called on governors and neighborhood leaders to announce the rates of power consumption in each area, and schedules for the timing and duration of outages.
It said the collection of garbage is the responsibility of the authorities, not citizens, and it calls for making the contracts with the garbage collection companies, which get paid with people's tax money, public.
The statement added that if these demands are ignored people with not pay for electricity or garbage collection. The statement said that if governors and the neighborhood leaders were directly elected they would be loyal to the people.
Protests have taken place at various locations in Upper Egypt in response the power outages.
Officials from the electricity and energy ministries have said they are working on the problem and asked people to ration their electricity consumption.
