Have the gov’t and the House reversed their positions on settling building code violations?

House of Representatives chatter leaking into the press indicates that the government and parliament’s Housing Committee appear to have switched positions on legislation governing the settling of building code violations. Committee member Mohamed Abdel Ghany is saying that the committee would like to set a punitive fee of 15% of the property’s value for developers to settle on building code violations, while the government wants a standard fee of EGP 100 per sqm, a substantially smaller amount. Previous coverage of the legislation suggested that it was in fact the Housing Ministry that wants to set a fee of 25% of the property’s value, while the committee wants fees lowered to 5-10%. The committee and the government plan to settle the issue after the Eid break, said Abdel Ghany.