The Mahalla workers, on 17 February 2008, were the first to put forward the demand, for raising the national minimum wage to LE1,200 per month, after it stagnated at LE35 per month since 1984. Nazif’s neoliberal cabinet only raised it to LE400 last year.

Following the uprising, Essam Sharaf’s cabinet had announced it’d raise the minimum wage to only LE700, despite condemnations from labor groups and NGOs. But shockingly now the military junta has officially endorsed the new government budget whereby the national minimum wage had been further reduced to LE684, with more austerity measures taken:

Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawy, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has endorsed the 2011/2012 state budget after it was amended and approved by the cabinet.
The total budget expenditure was amended from LE515 billion to LE491 billion, of which 54 percent would be directed to social projects.
The minimum wage was reduced from LE700 to LE684 per month as of July, with an annual total of LE9 billion to be paid in wages for two million government employees.
Expenditure on education decreased from LE55 billion to LE 52 billion, health from LE24 billion to LE23.8 billion, and housing from LE21 billion to LE16.7 billion.

Telecoms operator Vodafone said in January it and other mobile operators had no option but to comply with an order from the authorities to suspend services in selected areas of the country during the peak of the anti-government demonstrations.
In February, Vodafone also accused the authorities of using its network to send pro-government text messages to subscribers.
Communications and Information Technology Minister Maged Othman said his ministry planned to pay compensation estimated at around 100 million pounds to mobile telecoms operators for losses caused by the service disruption, the state news agency MENA said. It said the figure was reached by independent bodies.

The operators have had a moral obligation to say no. And no matter what “national security” obligations they signed onto when receiving their license from the state, they could have sent out warnings to the millions of customers prior to cutting the service, which could have saved lives.

And if Mubarak, Nazif and Adly were found found guilty, what about Mubarak’s minister of telecommunication, Tarek Kamel? Not only is he off the hook, but he’s been rewarded a seat in the NTRA board of directors, where General Rushdi el-Qamari still keeps his position.

The money should not go to the companies. The money should be go to the families of the martyrs and injured whose lives could have been saved if the telecommunication network was up and running during the uprising.

Al-Azhar graduates protest in front of the Press Syndicate against the government, demanding jobs, chanting: “To find employment we gotta have a revolution.”

أنباء- غير مؤكدة – عن تولى رشيد رئاسة الوزراء

— Ahmed Ragab (@Ragab) August 18, 2010

There are ongoing rumors that Rachid M. Rachid, the minister of trade and industry, will replace Ahmad Nazif as the Prime Minister. There aren’t any official confirmations yet. Youm7 reports Mubarak has received today Rachid and the NDP’s old goon Safwat el-Sherif, without elaborating more on the visit.

Rachid, an entrepreneur-turned-politician, a neoliberal guru, member of the NDP Policies Secretariat, close aide to Gamal Mubarak, will by no means put halt to the neoliberal policies the regime has been pushing aggressively for two decades. His appointment, if it turns out to be true, will entail more social attacks. Faced with economic difficulties, more austerity measures are expected, and it’s the kind of job Rachid will be good at.

Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif not only answers to the president, parliament and journalists, but now faces the frustrations of students. During a recent visit to Port Said, Abdallah Ahmad Bazazo confronted Nazif.
“I am feeling the corruption everywhere,” Bazazo said. “I feel like I am inhaling it and the government doesn’t move a finger.”
“Every day I get more estranged, feeling like I am not a citizen. Why do the citizens lose their pride inside the country and gain it outside? Did you cries when the ferry drowned or when the soldiers on the border die?”
As soon as the student finished talking, the whole crowd started applauding for more than five minutes. This was just one of a series of hot confrontations between university students and the prime minister during a leadership management camp. Most of the questions were about corruption, selling the national companies, importing gas to Israel, relations with Ethiopia, Iran and America, high prices and unemployment.

Rights group Doctors Without Rights (DWR) are planning to protest what they describe as the Health Ministry’s “deception.”
The group is staging a protest outside the Doctors’ Syndicate a day before Doctors’ Day on March 18, where Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif and Minister of Health Hatem Al-Gabaly will be honored during the syndicate’s celebrations.
In the statement announcing the protest, DWR denounce “the honoring of those responsible for doctors’ suffering” and call for an end to “the deception of doctors with make-believe incentive payments.”
Earlier this week independent daily Al-Dostour reported that during a meeting with Doctors’ Syndicate head Hamdy El-Sayyed, Nazif announced that incentive payments due to be received by specialists and consultants in June will not be paid because of “insufficient funds as a result of the global economic crisis.”
Nazif is reported to have said that the funds necessary to grant the incentive payments will not be available for another two years.

Without any introduction we found Mubarak today issuing a Presidential decree of a reshuffle in the Nazif Cabinet. Do not put too much hope all the corrupt ministers are still in their positions.