Egypt President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi said Sunday that providing job opportunities would curb militancy, stressing that his administration intends to curb unemployment in restive North Sinai and across the country.
“Whoever works will only think about his house and kids, and won’t considering [adopting] extremism,” he said, during the announcement of cooperation between the Egypt Sinai Industrial Development and Investment Company and the armed forces to detect and extract marble in Sinai.
“We are coming to tell you, all Sinai people and Egypt people, that we will not leave an area without rushing to provide job opportunities in it and building it,” he added, according to Al-Ahram’s Arabic news website.
Egypt’s unemployment rate fell to 12.8 percent in the three months ending 30 September from 13.1 percent in the same period a year earlier, official statistics agency CAPMAS said in November.
Militant attacks, especially in North Sinai, have notably increased in Egypt since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013 following nationwide protests against his rule.
source: Ahram ONLINE
