Ramses Central Fire is Evidence of Corruption
On 7/7/2025, the annual fire season in Egypt began late. The people of Egypt have become accustomed to a series of "unknown origin" fires, usually in government buildings, in June of each year. However, no one is unaware that they are merely a cover-up for corruption and theft before the start of the annual review and inventory season. Corruption has become an obvious matter in light of a system far from Islam, but this year the season opened with the Ramses Central fire, which is the most important communications infrastructure center in Egypt, where a fire broke out on the seventh floor of the building, which houses communications equipment rooms, and then spread to the other floors, resulting in the death of 4 employees and the injury of 27 others. In addition to initial estimates of losses in the millions of pounds, the losses are not limited to communications equipment only, but also included:
• The level of communication in Egypt decreased to about 62% of the normal rate
• Internet, landline and mobile phone services were disrupted in Cairo and several governorates
• Digital banking services were affected, including credit cards, ATMs and electronic transactions
• Emergency phone number services such as ambulance and urgent care were temporarily disrupted repeatedly
• Trading on the Egyptian Stock Exchange was suspended on Tuesday due to technical difficulties
• Some flights at Cairo International Airport were affected due to the disruption in communication networks
This incident has shown the extent of mismanagement in Egypt, as it became clear that Ramses Central processes 40% of local and international communications traffic, making the system dependent on a single point of failure, and we have seen the result of that, in addition to the danger resulting from concentrating the infrastructure remains even if appropriate measures are taken to preserve the building, so what about when we are talking about a dilapidated building built in 1927 and the state continued to rely on it until this moment! Rather, they did not bother to rehabilitate the building. It turned out that one of the biggest reasons for the expansion of the fire was the lack of sufficient updates in the fire extinguishing systems and cable cooling. As a result of all this negligence, any spark in this building leads to a fire that claims lives and sets the level of communications back decades, and this happened despite the existence of alternatives. According to the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, Egypt has a network of 1,676 centrals, but the state has not made any effort to restructure the system, and this is not strange, as it is the system's habit to ignore problems until losses occur in money and lives, as if they are not responsible for them before God, ignoring the saying of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him: «THERE IS NO SERVANT WHOM ALLAH ENTRUSTS WITH A FLOCK WHO DIES ON THE DAY HE DIES WHILE HE IS DECEIVING HIS FLOCK, BUT ALLAH WILL FORBID HIM PARADISE».
As for the state's efforts in dealing with the crisis, it is another matter and another door to failure to take care of people's affairs; restoring basic services such as ambulance or banks took more than 24 hours, indicating the absence of any emergency plan. Despite the efforts of the firefighters, the nature of the building and poor planning caused the fire to renew on Thursday, July 10, then it renewed again in the back of the building, but the reports did not mention a specific date, but clarified that the reason:
• "Fire under the ashes" remained in parts of the building that were not completely cooled
• Electrical leaks as a result of firefighting water reaching sensitive components
• The first fire weakened the internal cable insulators, making them vulnerable to electrical sparks
• Difficulty in cooling the cables buried inside the walls, which are difficult to access
Which confirms the building's lack of readiness for any emergency.
After the extent of negligence has become apparent in an indispensable field such as communication services, the government's response should be to apologize, investigate those responsible, and promise reforms, but this is not the case with the regime in Egypt. Officials came out with statements that the people of Egypt considered provocative, such as the statement of the Minister of Communications, Amr Talaat, "Enough, the internet has increased after the fire!" And Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly "If I sell it, why would I burn it?", talking about the rumor of selling the building without mentioning details about structural reforms or the future of the building, so these statements aroused the anger of the Egyptians, and thus the failure to deal politically with the situation is the culmination of a series of negligence and corruption, so no one in Egypt is afraid of accountability, and they are already part of an agent system created by the West to replace it with the system of governance in Islam, which is the Caliphate. It has never happened under the Caliphate that the scene of destroying state devices is repeated annually to cover up corruption, in a scene that everyone realizes the truth of and no one can stop it except by uprooting this corrupt regime from its roots and restoring Islam to power, and no one is working on that in our time except Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is working to resume the Islamic way of life anew with its justice, care, and preservation of people's security, safety, and property under Islam and its state that eliminates corruption and cleanses the country's atmosphere; the Rightly-Guided Caliphate state on the method of Prophethood.
Written for the Radio of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir
Abdul Rahman Shaker - Egypt Province