EGYPTIAN workers are striking to improve their poverty-stricken living standards. Postal workers, textile workers, port workers in Suez and hospital doctors have most recently been taking action.
Egypt’s annual urban inflation rose to 9.8 per cent in the twelve months to March 2014 to reach 144.8 points, up from 7.6 per cent in the same month last year, according to a statement by state statistics body CAPMAS last Thursday.
According to CAPMAS, the urban consumer price index (CPI) eased to 0.7 per cent compared to February 2014. The headline CPI has similarly swollen to 10.2 per cent year-on-year at 147.4 points, compared to 7.5 per cent in the year leading up to March 2013.
On a monthly basis, overall inflation dropped to 0.7 per cent, from one per cent the previous month. CAPMAS attributed the inflation increase to the 1.8 per cent price hike of vegetables and 2.1 per cent hike in fruits cost. Also (poultry, meat) and (eggs, dairies products) have witnessed price soar of 2.8 per cent and 24.3 per cent respectively.
Meanwhile, Egypt will need further international assistance to put its economy back on track despite receiving huge loans from Gulf Arab states, the IMF said on Friday. ‘Egypt will need financial support which could come from its partners in the Gulf or, if the government wants that, from the IMF and from other international financial institutions,’ Christopher Jarvis, the International Monetary Fund’s Egypt mission chief, told reporters.
The IMF had been in talks on a $4.8 billion bailout package for Egypt, which has been coping with violence and economic woes since the 2011 overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak. But the discussions broke off last year due to political instability after the ousting of elected president Mohamed Mursi from power.
Saudi Arabia recently announced a $5 billion support package for Egypt before the country holds May 26-27 elections in which retired army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is seeking to be president. Two fellow oil-exporting Gulf monarchies, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have together promised $7 billion.
The IMF representative, Jarvis said that despite the influx of cash, Egypt still faces ‘big challenges’ including low growth, high unemployment and an aggravated budget deficit. He renewed calls on Egypt to take the politically sensitive step of reducing fuel subsidies, saying that they were painful for the budget.
‘The sooner the reform is started the better. But we see it as a process that will take several years,’ Jarvis said, adding that the IMF stood ready to assist. Any reduction in subsidies will provoke a massive revolutionary response from Egypt’s working class and youth who have seen off two presidents in the past three years and are now confronting the military government.
In another move that is certain to provoke a revolutionary reaction, the eligibility regulations to apply for a residential unit in the social housing programme prevents 50 per cent of the lowest-income Egyptian from qualifying, says the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in a report published this month.
In January, the government announced several regulations that make citizens eligible to apply for owning and renting units. The regulations stated that owning an apartment requires a maximum family income of EGP 40,000 per year, around 10 per cent of Egyptians, and a minimum income of EGP 23,040 a year.
For renting a residential unit, the family’s maximum income was set at EGP 18,000 a year. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics’ (CAPMAS) 2012/2013 Income, Expenditure and Consumption report, the top 10 per cent of Egyptians took in an average yearly income of EGP 42,789, while the minimum income of a middle class family stood at EGP 23,097.
The EIPR report indicated that the maximum income criterion excludes the income of the low and lowest income categories of Egyptian families. In order to be eligible to rent a house, families must have a maximum income of EGP 18,000 a year.
The rent for the residential units is EGP 225 a month. The EIPR report illustrated that this exceeds 14 per cent of the expenditure of the Egyptian families who belong to the poorest classes. The previous week, the Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development Mostafa Madbouly announced that 50,000 residential units will begin accepting reservations in mid-April. Housing Minister Mostafa Madbouly said the construction would take up to one year.
The government announced the Social Housing Programme in July 2012. The national project is expected to provide 1m residential units. Construction was projected to last five years, from fiscal year (FY) 2012/2013 to FY 2016/2017, with an average of 200,000 units being constructed per year.
Meanwhile, Egyptian workers and youth are continuing their battle for democratic rights against the military’s anti-protest laws. The verdict on the appeal of 15 people belonging to Ultras Revolutionary will be announced on 18 May, the Qasr Al-Nil Misdemeanour Court decided on Sunday.
The defendants had been sentenced on 22 February to two years of hard labour, an EGP 50,000 fine and two years of probation on charges relating to public assembly. The defendants are part of a group of 33 detainees arrested from a public park in Downtown Cairo during the second day of the constitutional referendum in January.
Ahmed Othman, a lawyer who represents the detainees, said: ‘They were all randomly arrested.’ The meeting they held was to discuss preparations for the third anniversary of the 2011 revolution that overthrew Mubarak and his military dictatorship.
However, Othman said that while some of the defendants were taking part in the meeting, others were just passing by when they were detained. Their charges, according to Othman, include unlawful assembly, assaulting security forces, blocking roads, organising a protest and ‘thuggery’.
Mohamed Salah, the brother of one of the defendants, is frustrated with repeated delays, saying he was puzzled the delay lasted as long as a month and five days. The mothers of the detainees broke down when they heard the decision,’ Salah said.
Sunday’s court session had been scheduled to be held on Saturday. However, it was postponed because there were too many trials taking in place in Tora Prison, and thus there was no room for the Ultras Revolutionary trial, Othman said.
It is not standard procedure that trials are held inside Tora Prison, he said, but trials are being held there as a result of the security situation in the country. The remaining 18 who were arrested, all minors, were acquitted by the Abbaseya Juvenile Court.
The Ultras Revolutionary members were arrested while in possession of drums, scarves and clothes with the name of the group on them, but none were in possession of weapons. The prosecution ordered the release of Alexandrian activist and lawyer Mahienour El-Massry on Saturday after she contested a verdict in absentia against her. A date for El-Massry’s first trial session was set for 20 May.
El-Massry was arrested on Friday night in the Mansheya neighbourhood in Alexandria, and was taken to the Mansheya police station by an officer called Tamer Moein who knew her from a previous case, said Ahmed El-Shazly, the regional director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
El-Massry was sentenced in absentia for two years and EGP 50,000 fine for violating the Protest Law by organising a protest in solidarity with Khalid Said during the retrial of the police personnel accused of his murder last December.
Moein arrested El-Massry to face the verdict and also accused her of ‘intentionally hiding documents’, El-Shazly said. After investigation, however, the prosecution dismissed the new accusation against El-Massry because the documents were just letters from four of the detainees in the same case where El-Massry was sentenced in absentia and were insignificant to the case.
Said’s torture and death in 2010 played a major part in inciting the 25 January Revolution. The Alexandria Criminal court convicted two of the three personnel charged in his torture and murder, sentencing them to serve 10 years in maximum security prison. The third was acquitted.
On 2 December, clashes erupted outside the courthouse where the retrial of Khalid Said’s accused killers was in session. Clashes between protesters and masked police officers resulted in the arrest of three protesters. Last February four of the accused got their verdict upheld while five others, including El-Massry and activist Hassan Mustafa, were tried in absentia.
Taher Mukhtar, a member of the activist group Revolutionary Socialists in Alexandria, who was among the protesters on 2 December, said he was assaulted by security forces and that two of the protesters who were arrested on that day were trying to get the police officer who was assaulting him to stop.
Mukhtar said he tried to testify in front of the prosecution as a witness and as a victim but his request was denied. In court, he was stalled several times until the verdict was issued. Mukhtar filed a complaint on 5 December against the prosecutor who barred him from testifying, but his complaint was never reviewed.
‘I feel helpless because I cannot help the people who defended me,’ Mukhtar said. ‘I can obviously tell that the prosecution and the judiciary are involved in the conspiracy against the revolutionaries and anyone who wants to make a positive change.’
