Mervat, an independent trade unionist from el-Warraq Office, was among the few members of the Giza Union Committee who supported the 2007 strike. Out of 11 union committees which belong to the state-controlled General Union of Bank and Insurance Workers, only the Daqahilya union committee and half of the Giza union committee supported (and took a leading role in) the three month protests, followed by 11 day-street occupation in front of the downtown Cairo ministerial cabinet HQ. The rest of the state-backed trade unionists did their best to sabotage the protests but were completely sidelined by the Higher Strike Committee, which led the 55,000 civil servants to victory.

Recalling the Hussein Hegazi Street occupation, Mervat proudly said: “I slept in the street for 11 days, and was not planning to go home except with my rights regained. There was no difference between men and women in the strike. We were all family. Ostaz Kamal (Abu Eita) was our eldest brother… The women were doing the cooking, and were also leading the chants in demonstrations. The women from Daqahliya particularly were good at chanting and coming up with slogans.” With a shy smile she added, “I’m not good at leading the chants, but I can repeat with the crowd.”

Mervat denounced the state-backed General Federation of Trade Unions‘ position during the strike, and spoke with enthusiasm regarding the establishment of a new free union: “Many of us support it. It’s our right to choose people who can represent us with honesty. There are those of course who are trying to sabotage the project. They are khawana (traitors)! But they are very few. We are on the right side and we will win.”

Sarah Carr brings us some good news about the fight against the privatization of the country’s health insurance system…

The Administrative Court halted government plans to place Egypt’s health insurance system under the control of a profit-making company, in a judgement issued on Thursday in what a rights advocate called a “historic” verdict.
The case was raised by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in April 2007.
The verdict forces the government to suspend implementation of its plans until a final verdict is issued.
“In this historic decision the judiciary stood by the public’s right to health, and stood in the path of a government plan aimed at gradually turning health into a profit-driven commodity,” EIPR director Hossam Bahgat said in a statement on Thursday.
In a briefing EIPR explained that in April 2007 a prime ministerial decision was issued which sought to create a holding company for health care and transfer the ownership of all health insurance clinics and hospitals to it.
EIPR’s case contended that in taking this decision the prime minister exceeded the powers given to him by turning public funds into privately-owned funds and transferring assets owned by a public body to companies.
About half of Egypt’s population are insured under the health insurance system.
EIPR suggested in the briefing that the plans also prevent a public body from offering health care to the beneficiaries of health insurance — as it is legally obliged to do by law — and transfers responsibility for tasks assigned to it by law, such as management of funds and employees, to the holding company’s board of administration.
This, the briefing explains, is in violation of Egyptian law which provides that the assets, tasks and competencies of a public body cannot be altered by prime ministerial decree.
In addition, EIPR warns that the cost of the plan to turn social health insurance into a profit-based enterprise would fall on the shoulders of health insurance beneficiaries: the fact that the holding company is profit-driven and has investment functions will add a profit margin to treatment and necessarily increase its cost.
In May 2007 over 20 Egyptian NGOs formed the Committee for the Defence of the Right to Health in order to challenge both the prime ministerial decision concerning the holding company and government plans to privatise health insurance.
Privatisation, EIPR says, would mean “dealing with the right to health as a commodity which can be bought and sold for profit, rather than as a service the state is obliged to offer the public on at minimum cost.”

Continue reading ‘‘Historic’ verdict freezes government health insurance plans’

Farah…

Nermeen…

Carole…

Gaber…

Read this…

The Mahalla 49 trial resumes today… Amnesty International came out with a strong statement denouncing the trial…

Sarah Carr reports…

Workers in Ismailia on Wednesday continued a third day of protest against what they allege are government plans to close down the Canal Company for Ports and Large Projects.
Established in 1965, the company employs 2,000 people and undertakes sewage, electricity and infrastructure projects in the Suez Canal area.
Ashraf Abbas, a member of the Egyptian Workers and Trade Unions Watch’s Ismailia branch told Daily News Egypt that the workers have 15 demands, including wage parity with employees of the Suez Canal Authority (of which the Canal Company is a subsidiary).
Average wages range between LE 250 and LE 600 per month.
Mohamed Anwar, the head of the company’s trade union committee, told Daily News Egypt that the workers’ primary grievance is the decision by the National Authority for Drinking Water and Sewage, taken three weeks ago, to cancel 19 water station projects the Canal Company has held since 1990.
“The National Authority claims that it’s because we were late in fulfilling our obligations. Yes, we were late, but it’s the National Authority which is responsible. We spent years exchanging correspondence with them clarifying aspects of the project, and this is what caused the delay,” Anwar explained.
Anwar says that the decision to cancel the projects with the Canal Company was premeditated.
“It was planned. This is part of a scheme to destroy the Canal Company and place state-owned utilities under the control of an international cartel.
“This protest is not just to defend workers’ rights. We are also defending national security,” Anwar told Daily News Egypt.
Abbas told Daily News Egypt that in 1996 a decision was made to stop buying spare parts for the company’s equipment.
“Young people no longer receive training in the company, and in fact there are no workers under 40 employed in it. In addition, one quarter of the company’s workers are on short-term contracts. This is part of an eventual plan to privatise the Suez Canal,” he said.
He says that services provided by the company are already being contracted out to private contractors.
“The company has to pay for the difference between what the work actually costs and the rate charged by the contractors. As a result, it is making a loss.
“Contractors however who deal with the Canal Company come out millionaires, and individuals within the company’s administration also benefit from these contracts,” Abbas said.

I visited last Wednesday El-Warraq Real Estate Tax Collection Agency, in Giza, whose employees played a central role in the 2007 strike, led by Abdel Qader Nada who is one of the province’s representatives in the Higher Strike Committee.

The working conditions at the office are not fit for humans, it looked like a barn not a government office. The civil servants are crammed into either tiny corridors that were more similar to a cellar…

“You coming to take a photo of us in our graves?” joked one of the employees in the pic above. It did feel like a grave.

Other employees have their desks located under a roof made of bouss, which do not shield them from the sun or rain…

The roof itself turned into a garbage dump…

And no facilities given to the civil servants, no computers… Nazif’s “E-Government” has no presence… The Tax Collectors have to store all the data manually and work from obsolete notebooks and files…

Attacks continue against the NATO occupation troops…

Four NATO soldiers, including three Canadians, were killed in attacks in southern Afghanistan, while three Taliban militants were killed in a fight with Afghan and foreign forces in the western region, officials said Thursday. A soldier with International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed in a explosion in southern region on Thursday during a military patrol, the ISAF said in a statement.

While in Iraq…

A roadside bomb killed two American soldiers patrolling eastern Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said, announcing the first combat deaths in the capital in a week.

Click on the poster below to read the full report…

New design by Comrade Gaber…

A Real Estate Tax Collector, working on a Ramadan afternoon, in el-Warraq office. The participation of the employees from that particular office in the 2007 strike and Hussein Hegazi Street occupation was among the highest in the Giza province…

Kareem el-Beheiri uploaded more pix of the Mahalla detainees‘ families to his flickr…