The meeting that was due to take place today Thursday between the strike leaders and the Finance Minister was postponed again. This time the strike leaders were told they would be contacted by the ministry on Sunday to be notified of a meeting date.
There’s a feeling among the strike leadership that the minister is try to dodge implementing the rest of the demands. On their part, the leaders renewed their threats of staging another sit-in on 9 January.
Around 250 workers (out of a total force 450) from Efco Food Industries are continuing their sit-in which they started two days, in Suez, demanding:
1-Their annual shares of profits which they haven’t received from 1999, the year the company was founded
2-Food allowance or a meal, as the workers are given neither
3-Health insurance, especially as industrial safety procedures is almost non-existent according to the workers, who say accidents and severe injuries (which lead to the amputation of limps) are common in the workplace.
4-Night-shifts allowance (badal wardeya): The company’s factory in Ataqa, Suez, operate 24/7 on three successive eight-hour daily shifts. The night shifts should have a higher pay than the morning shifts, but the company are paying flat rates.
5-From the total work force of 450, only 150 workers have contracts. The protesters are demanding contracts and job security
6-A worker by the name Fathi Afifi will be interrogated by an administrative penal board. The workers are demanding this move by the management to be revoked.
On Dec 29, we shall finally get the verdict in Judge Murad‘s lawsuit against the govt, demanding the banning of 51 websites and blogs including mine, under the claim that they are harmful to national security and insulting to the president.
The Arabic network for human rights information and Hisham Mubarak Law Center, two human rights organizations, stated today that the next Saturday December 29, 2007, will witness a very significant event. The administrative court will issue a sentence that will affect the future of internet & its freedom in Egypt. The sentence will be issued in the case that was filed by the judge Abdul Fattah Murad last February. Judge Murad launched his case demanding the banning of 51 websites in Egypt. He alleged that such websites defame, in their contents, the Egyptian government. The case came as a consequence of the detection of an assault against the intellectual property of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information by Judge Murad, as he published a profiting book containing dozens of copied pages pages of one of the network reports without referring to the source.