For 16 days this month, not a single shipping container moved into or out of Egypt's principal port for Asian trade.
Labourers at Ain Sukhna, on the Suez Canal east of Cairo, were busy protesting management's plans to continue using short-term employment contracts.
The roughly 1,200 striking dock workers, who slept each night in empty containers while campaigning for permanent jobs with the port operator DP World, hung a white banner reading "Our one demand is to be hired," alongside a large Egyptian flag.
"I'm not demanding more money," says Mahmoud Mustafa, a married father of two girls who earns the equivalent of about US$500 (Dh1,837) a month. "I just want stability for myself and my family."
The stand-off, which ended on February 17 when the government agreed to give the strikers jobs with a new state-controlled port company, showcased workers' growing activism two years after the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak.
More than 1,000 independent unions are colliding with an Islamist government that has been unable to arrest the economy's deterioration and is pushing to prevent the rise of alternative political forces.
"The government's ability to control workers ended with Mubarak," says Mohammed Abdeen, the general coordinator of legislation for the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions (EFITU) in Cairo. "It doesn't exist anymore. You can't control them."
For investors, labour's strength - and its weakness - may prove equally vexing. Egypt's workers are strong enough to interrupt commerce, yet too divided to force a resolution of the country's political stalemate.
Since the 2011 revolution, Egyptian workers have launched more than 3,000 strikes or demonstrations over wages, working conditions and political demands, Mr Abdeen says.
As Egypt averaged 7 per cent annual growth in the three years before the 2008 financial crisis, the promise of a compliant state union and low wages was instrumental in attracting investors from the United States, Europe and the Arabian Gulf. Foreign direct investment soared to more than $13 billion in 2008 from $2bn four years earlier.
Even so, three fledging independent labour unions emerged and major strikes shook the regime.
With Egypt now trapped in a protracted transition from dictatorship to democracy, foreign investment has evaporated. In the months ahead, transport strikes with "the potential to cause considerable disruption to business operations and supply chains" are likely, according to a report by Maplecroft, a risk-management firm based in the United Kingdom.
The government is taking steps to improve Egyptians' standard of living, the finance minister El-Morsi El-Sayyed Hegazi told reporters in Cairo yesterday, including raising the income-tax exemption to 12,000 Egyptian pounds (Dh6,538) from 9,000 pounds.
Still, he says, the current strikes and port closures are hurting efforts to revive the economy.
Labour unrest is just one element of the country's broader disorder. From the capital to Suez Canal ports, Egypt in recent weeks has come close to unravelling. Protests are a routine occurrence in Cairo's Tahrir Square where a burnt-out police van symbolises authority defied.
At the Sukhna port, also idled for two weeks during a November labour dispute, the recent work stoppage blocked imports of raw materials for plastics, petrochemical and textile factories and exports of phosphates, marble and citrus fruits, says Ayman Badawy, the commercial manager for DP World. The strike also deprived the cash-strapped government of more than $2m a day in customs duties.
"We're trying to encourage investors to come to Egypt," Mr Badawy says. "By all of these things happening, no one will come here and invest."
The benchmark EGX30 stock index is less than half its 2008 peak and the premium investors demand to hold Egyptian debt over similar-maturity US securities has more than doubled since the January 2011 start of the uprising.
The president Mohammed Morsi, elected in June, and his Muslim Brotherhood allies have been no more hospitable to union organising than was Mr Mubarak.
Since Mr Morsi's November constitutional decree, the Egyptian pound has surrendered about 10 per cent of its value against the dollar.
The decline, which makes imported goods more expensive, helped to push up prices an annualised 6.3 per cent in January.
Traders expect the pound to lose an additional 16 per cent of its value over the next year, according to non-deliverable forward prices. So price increases are likely to escalate to an annual rate of 8.3 per cent, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
Coupled with a sinking Egyptian currency, the IMF-decreed policy changes will only make life more expensive - and the clash between government and labour more dangerous.
"The Muslim Brotherhood's policies will impoverish the Egyptian people even more," says Mr Abdeen, adding: "Egyptian workers won't go back. They won't retreat."
* Bloomberg News
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MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Price, base / as tested Dh135,000
Engine 1.6L turbo
Gearbox Six speed automatic with manual and sports mode
Power 165hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque 240Nm @ 1,400rpm 0-100kph: 9.2 seconds
Top speed 420 kph (governed)
Fuel economy, combined 35.2L / 100km (est)
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Poacher
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'Worse than a prison sentence'
Marie Byrne, a counsellor who volunteers at the UAE government's mental health crisis helpline, said the ordeal the crew had been through would take time to overcome.
“It was worse than a prison sentence, where at least someone can deal with a set amount of time incarcerated," she said.
“They were living in perpetual mystery as to how their futures would pan out, and what that would be.
“Because of coronavirus, the world is very different now to the one they left, that will also have an impact.
“It will not fully register until they are on dry land. Some have not seen their young children grow up while others will have to rebuild relationships.
“It will be a challenge mentally, and to find other work to support their families as they have been out of circulation for so long. Hopefully they will get the care they need when they get home.”
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
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SPECS
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TEACHERS' PAY - WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Pay varies significantly depending on the school, its rating and the curriculum. Here's a rough guide as of January 2021:
- top end schools tend to pay Dh16,000-17,000 a month - plus a monthly housing allowance of up to Dh6,000. These tend to be British curriculum schools rated 'outstanding' or 'very good', followed by American schools
- average salary across curriculums and skill levels is about Dh10,000, recruiters say
- it is becoming more common for schools to provide accommodation, sometimes in an apartment block with other teachers, rather than hand teachers a cash housing allowance
- some strong performing schools have cut back on salaries since the pandemic began, sometimes offering Dh16,000 including the housing allowance, which reflects the slump in rental costs, and sheer demand for jobs
- maths and science teachers are most in demand and some schools will pay up to Dh3,000 more than other teachers in recognition of their technical skills
- at the other end of the market, teachers in some Indian schools, where fees are lower and competition among applicants is intense, can be paid as low as Dh3,000 per month
- in Indian schools, it has also become common for teachers to share residential accommodation, living in a block with colleagues
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
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- Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
- Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
- Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
Venom
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Cast: Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed
Rating: 1.5/5
Children who witnessed blood bath want to help others
Aged just 11, Khulood Al Najjar’s daughter, Nora, bravely attempted to fight off Philip Spence. Her finger was injured when she put her hand in between the claw hammer and her mother’s head.
As a vital witness, she was forced to relive the ordeal by police who needed to identify the attacker and ensure he was found guilty.
Now aged 16, Nora has decided she wants to dedicate her career to helping other victims of crime.
“It was very horrible for her. She saw her mum, dying, just next to her eyes. But now she just wants to go forward,” said Khulood, speaking about how her eldest daughter was dealing with the trauma of the incident five years ago. “She is saying, 'mama, I want to be a lawyer, I want to help people achieve justice'.”
Khulood’s youngest daughter, Fatima, was seven at the time of the attack and attempted to help paramedics responding to the incident.
“Now she wants to be a maxillofacial doctor,” Khulood said. “She said to me ‘it is because a maxillofacial doctor returned your face, mama’. Now she wants to help people see themselves in the mirror again.”
Khulood’s son, Saeed, was nine in 2014 and slept through the attack. While he did not witness the trauma, this made it more difficult for him to understand what had happened. He has ambitions to become an engineer.
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