Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has ordered the establishment of a system of service centres on major road networks in a manner that would be integrated with the National Road Project, a presidential statement said on Saturday.

El-Sisi gave the directive during a meeting with Major General Amir Sayed Ahmed, the Adviser to the President for Urban Planning, and Major General Magdy Anwar, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Watanya Company for Roads, the statement said.

Presidency spokesperson Bassam Rady said that the service centres aim to provide safety and comfort for drivers as well as new job opportunities.

The state aims to expand the scope of development on land on the sides of roads and axes in a manner consistent with the cultural and urban expansion that the state aims to achieve, Rady added in the statement.

El-Sisi launched the National Road Project in 2014 with the goal of constructing and/or upgrading 7,000km of highways. More than 5,000km are now complete, while the remainder is planned to be completed by the end of 2020.

Though deadly road accidents take place on a near-daily basis in Egypt, the government’s efforts in recent years to upgrade roads have brought improvements in this regard.

The number of road accidents fell by around 30 percent in 2019 to 9,992, down from 14,403 in 2014, according to data issued by the country's Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) in June.

Moreover, Egypt was ranked 28th in terms of the quality of road infrastructure in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Report in 2019, up from the 118th place in 2014.