Fruitful Desert
Page 43
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GYPT's current major engineering project, the Salhia irrigation scheme, will involve the expenditure of no less than £100m. over a period of six years and I gather that Atkinson Vehicles Ltd. have hopes that a little of this vast sum may come their way. The company's sales liaison engineer, Jeffrey Greenhalgh, has just returned from a fortnight over there where he went to have a look at 10 Atkinsons that are already on active service with Arab Contractors' (Osman Ahmed Osman) fleet.
For some time they have been working well in connection with the construction of the huge Aswan dam but have now been brought down to the Ismailia (Suez Canal) area for the new contract.
Commercial vehicles are liable to come in for tough treatment in those parts and Mr. Greenhalgh could not repress a measure of surprise at the nonchalance with which local people seemed to regard the fact that a fantastically overloaded bus had run off the road into the Nile. After all, they said, none of the passengers actually died.
The last time such a thing happened, they told him, there were 90 dead and 20-odd survivors—all from a 30 ft. single-decker!