Category: Blog

Cement workers update

Posted on By 3arabawy

The early buy-out packages negotiations reached a dead end yesterday with militant trade unionists representing Suez, Tora and Helwan Cement workers rightly raising the ceiling of their demands to discourage the Italian management from cutting down the labor force in the company, following the December strikes.

The Factory Union Committee officials, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm, deliberately gave the management a set of high-ceiling demands they knew would be refused. While union officials played a sabotaging, pro-govt role in most of the current strikes, there are cases where few independent Factory Union Committees took the side of the workers, including the above mentioned cement companies.

Kefaya calls for referendum on privatization, blasts corruption in new report

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily Star Egypt:

The Kefaya Movement for Change has taken a stand this week against the privatization of state-owned properties, calling for a national referendum before any further sales can take place.
The activist group, whose public support has dwindled in the last two years, claims that the country’s privatization program has been marred by rampant corruption. They argue that many properties have been sold for far less than their actual value to investors with the right political connections. In this environment, they say, the state no longer has the legitimacy to sell Egypt’s public enterprises without first consulting the people.
Kefaya’s demands were raised in a new report released by the group, entitled “No to the Sale of Egypt.”

Sinai tribes demand govt change security directors

Posted on By 3arabawy

A spokesperson for the northern Sinai tribes called on the government to change the provincial security directors “who are engaged in continuous violent practices against the Sinai Bedouins,” and demanded the release of the detained tribal youth, reports Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Sheikh Muhammad Attia Abu Rawas, who was chosen recently by the tribes as a spokesman according to Al-Masry Al-Youm, named in specific Police Brigadier Generals Essam Amer, the head of the provincial State Security office, Sami Lutfi, the head of General Security and his deputy Essam Fahmi, in addition to Ali Mekheimar, the head of Criminal Investigations, Reda Sweilam, the head of the provincial Investigations, as reported by the paper.

When I travelled to Northern Sinai last fall, I heard stories of torture by leftist activists and Taba bombings suspects. And I find it bloody ludicrous that the Bedouins who lived for centuries roaming the peninsula north and south, and traveling east and west canNOT move anywhere since the “liberation” without permission from the Mukhabarat, and they are hardly  welcomed as workers or even visitors in Mubarak’s imaginary Riviera in the south.

Photographer Amr Abdallah traveled to Sinai, and took some photos.

Sinai Bedouins crisis with the Security Egyptian-Israeli border in Sinai Bedouin lifeبدو سيناء مع الازمة الامنية على الحدود المصرية الاسرائيلية وطبيعه الحياه البدويه في سيناء