Cairo - A group of 55,000 tax workers demonstrated across
Egyptian provinces for higher wages and better working conditions on
Monday, vowing to start an indefinite strike and stop collecting
taxes until their demands were met.
The workers had similarly protested last October. According to the
workers, who are all members of the property tax department, their
counterparts in departments run by the Ministry of Finance receive
better benefits, a notion which they deem 'unfair.'
The protestors picketed the cabinet, organizing a march that
started from its headquarters, demanding that discrepancies in wages
be eliminated and asking for bonuses 'in compensation for the years
of hard work' where their rights were abused, according to local
newspapers which ran a preview of the picket.
In Arish, 380 kilometres north-east of Cairo, tax workers told
Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that state security personnel have given
them orders not to strike or join their fellow workers in Cairo.
However, a source from the tax department who requested anonymity,
said that a group of employees had already traveled to the Egyptian
capital to join the larger protests there despite of the ban.
The workers meanwhile stand alone as their union refuses to back
up their protests.
Hussein Mugawer, head of the labor union, told al-Masri al-Yom
newspaper that the workers' pleas are legitimate but they do not have
the union's support when it comes to strikes and protests.
'A strike will complicate ongoing negotiations (with the
government),' Mugawer said. 'The policy of arm-twisting that the
workers is following will not work (with the cabinet) and it will
complicate maters more.'
Makram Labib, a unionist, told the same newspaper that the tax
workers strikes - if they happen - could be the biggest of their kind
and could cause what he described as a 'paralysis' in the tax
department.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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