Year: 2009

Tanta Flax strike continues

Posted on By 3arabawy

Workers from three shifts are now taking part in the Tanta Flax and Oil Co sit-in, instead of rotating their participation. When I spoke with one of the strike leaders at 11pm, I could hear him with difficulty because of the strong chants thundering in the background.

Despite the mass mobilization of police troops, no clashes happened with the strikers, who blocked the highway for the day. The police troops are still stationed on the entrance of Mit Hebeish, according to the strike leader, but not in front of the factory gates (at least as I’m writing this).

There are promises floated around by the senior security officials of a “solution within 48 hours.”

Strike continues…

Young doctors protest working conditions

Posted on By 3arabawy

Via Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:

Around 40 young doctors staged their first demonstration today on the stair steps of the Doctors’ Syndicate, demanding better pay and improving work conditions. The fresh graduates’ two-hour protest was organized by the “Young Doctors of Egypt” Facebook group.
“Our starting salary is around LE 150 a month, and what can we expect after 10 years of practice? 900 pounds,” explains Ahmad Atef, a general practicioner, who founded the Facebook group around two months ago to give a voice to underpaid young doctors in Egypt. Atef stood in the protest waving a photocopy of his pay sheet around on which he had underlined his paltry salary.
Mohammed Shafiq, another member of the group responsible for publicizing the protest online, adds bitterly “we all studied medicine for 11 years. Do we really lose the best years of our youth for LE 250 a month?”
Salaries are not the only matter of concern for those young doctors, they say. They also face skyrocketing admission fees for post-graduate studies, which have recently jumped from LE 600 to LE 3650, and they are deprived of allowances for transportation, food and medicine.
“None of us receive any compensation of any kind, not even when we need to go to another province for work,” says Atef, who then compares young Egyptians doctors’ salaries to those received by their Saudis counterparts. “They start off with LE 15,000. Of course Saudi Arabia’s finances are much better, but the gap is far too wide!” he continues, his pay sheet still in his hand.
Emigration to the US or the Gulf states remains a possible, yet increasingly difficult, option for improving the young doctors’ salaries, but most of the protesters say they wish to stay in their homeland. Shafiq, for instance, says that “being humiliated by the Oil States,” does not appeal to him. “This is why this gathering is important, we want our work conditions to improve in Egypt and we will act concretely and peacefully to achieve this goal,” he declares.
On the stairs, the group of young doctors are silent. No humming or chants emanates from the crowd. The demonstration is peaceful and orderly, and the rows of policemen that normally surround any gathering are notably absent. “I guess the police know that we are not run by any political group,” Shafiq muses. “I do not know whether this (Young Doctors of Egypt) group will survive in the following months but if it does not I am confident that another one will take its place,” he concludes.

Tanta strikers feeling the heat

Posted on By 3arabawy

Via Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition:

Around 1000 workers at the Tanta Flax and Oil Company continued their strike for the 72nd day on the row, rejecting a suspension order from the state-backed union issued Sunday night. By 11 Monday morning, the workers had taken to the streets–blocking off the highway in front of the factory in Mit Hebeish, near Tanta’s southern entrance.
For more than two months, the strikers have protested the management of a Saudi businessman, Abdel Ilah el-Kahki, who purchased the company when it was privatized in 2005. The new owner, they complain, has delayed salaries and bonuses and already sacked nine prominent strike leaders.
Police and security forces were quick to intervene Monday, and by noon at least eight Central Security Forces trucks and one armored vehicle accompanied by an ambulance were making their way to the factory in order “to shut us down,” said one worker over the phone as the vehicles began to come into view.
According to strikers Safwat Michel and Hisham el-Okal, security forces cordoned off the area in front of the factory where hundreds of workers are continuing their sit-in. Michel said via telephone that “the security have put trucks in front of the factory and are not letting anything through.”
The workers tried to go to the local mosques in Mit Hebeish village and rally the local residents on behalf of the strikers, but they were banned by the police, el-Okal said.
“The security told the head of the village that he will lose his job if he allows us to go up the minarets and use the microphones to call for help from the citizens,” said el-Okal, one of the factory’s most vocal strike leaders who was fired for his activities.
On Sunday evening in Cairo, the strike leaders met with representatives from state-backed General Union of Textile Workers where they were asked to end their strike and given, “verbal promises to solve our problem,” said el-Okal.
His colleague Michel said the strikers have no intention of ending their activities until their concerns are addressed.
“We have been waiting for our demands to be heard and the owner has not wanted to deal with us properly until now, so why should we,” he said
Workers, said el-Okal, had put together new banners, hung on the factory’s gates, denouncing private investors and calling for the government to re-nationalize the company. Others, including el-Okal, have openly called for the self-management of the firm, away from both private investment and the Egyptian government.
A sit-in at the Labor Ministry was scheduled for Sunday morning, but due to security pressure, the state-run general union backed out.