Posts Tagged ‘Transportation’

VIDEO – Underground Metro workers on strike إضراب عمال مترو الأنفاق

Transport strike leader to go on trial! إحالة علي فتوح رئيس النقابة المستقلة لعمال هيئة النقل العام لمحكمة تأديبية

Ali Fetouh, a leading independent trade unionist at the Cairo Public Transport Authority, whose role was central to their 2009 and February 2011 strikes, will show up on 7 May at a penal court at the State Council, accused of “agitating for strikes and publicly talking about the problems of workers in the media.”

And they tell you “Mission Accomplished” and they tell Egypt’s workers are free now? Tell that to Ali Fetouh…

إضراب أصحاب سيارات النقل الثقيل في مصر

Truck drivers continue their strike…

Cairo Public Transportation workers to strike tomorrow

The Cairo Public Transportation workers are starting a strike in all the Cairo garages, 6am, demanding the modernization/replacement of the obsolete buses and spare parts, raising allowances related to work hazards, increasing bonuses, reforming the health services, and CALLING FOR THE FORMATION OF A FREE UNION, independent from the CORRUPT STATE-BACKED NDP-RUN EGYPTIAN GENERAL FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS.

The strike leaders are already coming under severe security pressures to abort the strike, as I’m blogging now, and some have expressed fear of arrest.

UPDATE: The strike has been aborted, early Wednesday morning, due to pressures from the police and the Ministry of Transportation officials.

قطار الفقراء

In Ayyat and elsewhere, the poor are always the overwhelming majority of train disasters…

Deadly crash in Ayyat

After more than 300 citizens were burnt alive in the Ayyat train accident in 2002, tonight, another disaster took place tonight, leaving at least 20 dead…

Public Transport Strikers إضراب عمال النقل العام – جراج المستقبل

Public Transport workers on strike, El-Mostaqbal Garage, Nasr City…

Privatization by other means: How the Public Transport sector was "murdered"

The government has played a dirty game in order to decimate the public transport service over the past decade.
The regime has made its desire to privatize the transport sector (railways and buses) no secret more than once. However, it was never an easy job. Such attempts were met with fierce opposition by the workers, and each time the transportation minister made statements about potential privatization schemes, threats of strikes loomed.
In the railways, the govt strategy rested on privatizing the “services,” like bringing a private company to run the catering on sleeping trains, instead of selling the sector already troubled with industrial actions that could explode even stronger.
In the public transportation sector, the govt resorted to what I describe as nothing short of murder.
The government has started to cut down the supply of spare parts to the old buses around five years ago. I don’t have any figures yet. But every striker in El-Mostaqbal Garage I interviewed repeated the same accusation: No spare parts are given to us starting from five years ago. The workers said they were instructed to take whatever parts they needed from older buses.
This meant the number of operating buses on every route line started dwindling, with buses going obsolete and rusting out day by day. No need to mention the implications that have had on the safety of the drivers and the passengers. Grab a local newspaper any day and bus crashes due to mechanical failures are almost a daily news item.
These are not accidents. These are cases of the state murdering its own poor citizens. Who gives a shit about those whose incomes can only afford them a ride in these public buses anyways?
And then the government opens the door for private companies to step in and operate their buses, with a higher ticket fee, on the same routes taken by the public transport buses. So if no public transport buses are available because they are literally dying, the citizen will have no choice but to hop onto the new private mini-buses or the micro-buses. Such private companies made sure their buses operated during the two day strike. I spotted on my way from Nasr City to downtown Cairo on the second day of the strike few of them in Abbassiya and Ramses, that belonged to Lebanon and El-Badr Companies.
So as you can see, the plan was simple. Kill old buses by not providing spare parts. Let private companies buses operate their vehicles on the same routes. The end result: privatization by other means.

Strikers إضراب عمال النقل العام

Public transportation strikers, El-Mostaqbal Garage, Nasr City…

A day without busses

A strike by the city’s bus drivers has ended after the government gave in to most of their demands, Lina Attalah reports for Al-Masry Al-Youm…

Many of Cairo’s public busses have disappeared from the capital city’s street over the past two days. Drivers, ticket-takers and mechanics from 14 of the 19 bus garages in Cairo and Giza governorates are on strike demanding improved working conditions and awaiting tangible responses from the authorities.
The effect on the streets was immediate, with far fewer public busses on the street and large crowds gathering at many city bus stops.
The government response was equally swift. On Wednesday evening, the strikers received an offer from the Public Transportation Authority meeting most of their demands and agreed to return to work.
The new government concessions, which will return the busses to the streets, include: an 8 percent salary increase, an exemption for drivers from most traffic fines, a monthly food allowance for LE120 for drivers and ticket-takers, and agreement to consider paying compensation to drivers and ticket-takers for their daily potential exposure to infectious diseases.
The government counter-offer seemingly ensures that Cairo’s public busses will be back on the street Thursday. The drivers, ticket-takers, mechanics and other support workers had threatened to stay in their garages indefinitely until the government met their long list of demands.
Topping the list of complaints were the pay scale, the drivers’ treatment by police officers on the streets of the capital.
“The road fines are unbearable,” said Dossuki Abdul Basset, a driver of an air-conditioned bus in the Mustaqbal garage in the Nasr City district in East Cairo. The garage houses around 100 busses and 700 workers, all of whom are participating in the strike, Abdul Basset said. “If I make 240 LE a month and I have compiled fines worth of LE 500, then it’s unfair.”
According to him, drivers demand exemption from traffic fines unless it’s for major violations like driving the wrong way up a one-way street or breaking traffic lights. “We get penalized if we are parked in a no-parking area. But that’s usually because the busses are in very poor conditions and not well-maintained,” he said. Another common fine is imposed when the bus is over-crowded with passengers, which the drivers say is impossible to avoid the shortage of available busses.
Some drivers complained of city policemen routinely demanding free rides. Policemen and military personnel are usually exempted from paying bus fares, but this does not apply to air-conditioned busses.
“When we tell them so, they threaten to penalize us,” said Abdul Basset.
Drivers expounded on the poor conditions of the busses. “Percentages of the day’s revenues and the LE 5 daily fare collection fee that are granted to drivers are deducted if the bus is broken, but no money is spent on maintaining busses,” said Afifi Afifi, a mechanic who works in the Mustaqbal garage. According to him, the Cairo governorate hasn’t supplied enough spare parts, leaving many of the busses barely functional. Out of 100 busses in the garage, 35 are not working, while others are in need for maintenance.
“Drivers are told to take the busses even if they are functioning at a 10 percent capacity only. When the bus is broken in the middle of the road, drivers are penalized by not getting the revenues’ percentage while they are fined for stopping in the middle of the road,” Afifi said.
Long-time workers are also worried about their retirement schemes. “We get deductions from our salaries to go to social insurance, but they don’t actually go there,” said Adel Mohammad Moussa, a 59-year old driver. On many pay slips, the social insurance number is absent while deductions show. According to him, retired workers do not get their pensions easily and they are just sent off with an insufficient end-of-service reward. Poor healthcare is also a source of unrest amongst the public transportation sector workers who said that the current packages do not adequately cover their families’ needs.
Officials from the General Union for Land Transport Worker worked to mediate between the strikers and the Cairo and Giza governorates. “We are the representatives of our colleagues and we take the responsibility of presenting their demands to the governor,” said Bayoumi Mohammad Thabet, vice president of the union’s Committee for Mini-Busses and Air-Conditioned Busses in an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm conducted prior to the government’s counter offer.
“The governorate is very responsive and promises workers to find solutions to their problems,” said Thabet. “In 2007, workers demanded a raise in incentives and they were raised from 3 percent to 6 percent (of basic wage). This has cost the governorate LE 30 million,” he added.
A smaller group of drivers, fare collectors and mechanics went on strike in the summer of 2007, making the same demands, but they claim little has been done so far. The strikers two years ago also demanded an increase in their cut of the overall ticket revenues percentages from 2 percent to 10 percent, say they settled and returned to work after the governorate raised it to 4 percent.
“Those issues cannot be settled by the governor alone. He does not own a bank. There have to be talks with the ministries of health and finance for the allowances issue,” said Thabet.
Many of the workers say they no longer want the public bus system to answer to the different governorates and want to come under the authority of the Ministry of Public Transportation like railways workers.