Public transportation workers on strike إضراب عمال النقل العام

Posted on By 3arabawy

I’m receiving news that 3000 public transportation workers are on strike in Cairo. They include bus drivers, ticket collectors, maintenance workers in the stations of Nasr and Fateh, located in my neighborhood Nasr City, east of the capital.

I’ll post more details soon.

UPDATE: The Sixth District of Nasr City has turned into a military zone, with heavy police deployments. The strikers are under siege. No photographers or reporters are allowed in. The strikers number something between 2000 and 3000. The workers are demanding raising their ridiculously low salaries (you can work for 10 years, and your basic salary won’t exceed LE500). They are also demanding a corruption investigation into their housing society, especially with the existence of 26 emergency cases of workers without houses. The strikers are also demanding equality in food allowances. While the driver receives LE100 a month, the ticket collector receives LE55, and the maintenance worker gets LE20!! The strikers are demanding the food allowance to be raised more than LE100 and to be paid equally to everybody.

The strikers, in addition, want an increase in their percentage of the bus tickets sales. The workers get 2.5% of the value of the sold ticket. They want to increase this to 10%.

The workers are also protesting their treatment when they get transferred from their jobs due to medical reasons. The government cuts down their bonuses from LE300 to LE70!

The workers have occupied the two stations (Nasr and Fateh), which have 149 buses. The government managed only to bring out less than 40. The rest are under the workers’ control.

The public transportation workers in Sawwah and Giza have not joined the strike yet, but my sources say they are following closely what’s happening in Nasr City, and there’s a possibility the industrial action will spread.

Could that be another 1976? Back then, public transportation workers launched a national strike, one day after Sadat was declared president by 99% in a sham referendum. This paved the road to the January 1977 Bread Intifada.

UPDATE: It’s 10pm now. The strike continues in Nasr and Fateh stations… but no information is available yet if anything happened in the other stations in Cairo or Giza. I was told the chief of the Public Transport Authorities arrived in person to negotiate with the strikers. He asked them to suspend the strike, and promised their demads will be met in July with the start of the new financial year. The workers refused, and are still sitting in.

Mubarak slips from powerbroker to event planner

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AFP:

Even as Egypt gears up to play host to another international conference on Iraq, its role in the region is looking ceremonial and toothless compared to the successes of Saudi Arabia.
Analysts argue that diplomatic endeavors to solve the crises in Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories have exposed the decline of Egypt as a key powerbroker.
“After 26 years of reign, the Pharaoh is growing tired,” said Antoine Basbous, who heads the Observatoire des Pays Arabes, a Paris-based think tank on the Arab world. “The Egyptian regime is running out of steam, takes few initiatives, and is constantly on the back foot,” he added.
World leaders shuttling across the Middle East to find fixes to the region’s woes still stop over at President Hosni Mubarak’s palace to lend a respectful ear to the veteran leader’s advice.
The May 3 to 4 talks on restoring security in Iraq are taking place in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh but observers argue that Egypt’s role is increasingly confined to lending its resort facilities.
“Egypt is merely hosting the conference but it will have no influence on the substance,” said Imad Gad, a political analyst with the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “The fact that Saudi Arabia plays a prominent role in the affairs of Iraq is not surprising but it is much more striking to see it take the lead on the traditionally Egyptian files of Palestine and Sudan,” he said.
Statements from foreign diplomats visiting Cairo are still peppered with praise for “Egypt’s central role” in the region, but few foreign powers still take their cue from Cairo, he argued.
“Egypt is too busy preparing the tricky succession to Gamal Mubarak and striking deals with the US administration on economic and democratic reform … so it has given up its regional role,” Gad said.