(DNE Photo)
By Doaa Farid
Around 100 employees of Banque Misr are entering their second day of demonstrations at the main branch in Cairo, calling for the dismissal of the bank’s chairman and board of directors and the reversal of his restructuring decisions.
The bank’s chairman, Mohamed Kamal El-Din Barakat, issued several decisions on Thursday, including employment restructuring to restrict job categories.
The demonstrations started on Sunday responding to an online campaign through Facebook titled Tamarod Banque Misr after the popular political campaign, with the goal of “withdrawing confidence from the board,” reported state-run Ahram online.
After the closure of the bank on Sunday, the employees of the main branch along with Cairo branches organised a protest and called for a strike.
Fatma El-Gouly, the head of the communication department at Banque Misr, said these decisions stemmed from a new protocol to increase the job categories to 15 from seven, leading some employees to complain and call for salary increases. She also denied any sort of strike occurred in the bank.
El-Gouly said the protesters numbered about 100 of 12,000 Banque Misr employees.
Barakat, the current chairman of the board of directors, was appointed in September 2011 during Essam Sharaf’s cabinet and the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. He is currently also a board member of The Egyptian Banking Institute and the Arab Academy for Banking and Financial Sciences and the Chairman of the Union of Arab Banks.
