CAIRO: Workers at Arab Company for Radio Transistor and Electronic Appliances (Telemasr) protested on Thursday after the owners shut down the factory and gave them a one-month paid vacation.
The workers saw the shutdown as an attempt to manipulate the demands they’ve been making since the privatization of the company in 1999.
"The owner Hani Al-Ghazawy claimed that we vandalized the factory and shut it down in an attempt to ignore our demands," member of the shareholders board Abdel-Alim Kotb told Daily News Egypt.
"We demanded good pension plans, retirement packages, and bringing back the transportation services after Al-Ghazawy sold the busses," he said.
Kotb confirmed that Telemasr’s losses, since its privatization and under El-Ghazawy’s management, reached 47 times the company’s original capital.
"The company owners deliberately vandalized the factory and accused us of doing so by filing complaints against us. And now the factory is shutdown and we do not know what will happen to us," he said.
The former public sector electronics factory is known for its NEC TVs, cookers and most recently laptops. It has two branches, one in Haram and another in Ismailia.
A one-month paid vacation also meant that the workers’ monthly average salary of LE 600, would drop to half or even less, since it was mainly made up of allowances related to work.
Workers standing outside the company headquarters near Haram Street in Giza on Thursday said they were worried about the future of the company. A month without production would give the owner an excuse to fire more workers. They claim they were 3,000 in the 1990s and have dwindled to 200 workers.
The workers said they own 12.5 percent of the shares, which are mainly represented in real estate assets. They said such assets, along with machines and raw material, were sold.
Reports they’ve been filing to the prosecutor general for 12 years have been ignored, they claimed.
