At least 500 protesters from labor unions, state workers and opposition groups gathered at Egypt’s cabinet building a day after world Workers’ Day, demanding a rise in the minimum wage which has been set at 35 pounds ($6.30) a month since 1984.
Analysts have been watching to see if a spate of recent protests, still small by world standards, can gain the momentum and broader support to challenge a political landscape dominated for almost three decades by President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak, who turns 82 this week, has not said if he will run for a sixth term, but there are few signs a viable challenger will emerge to upset Egypt’s entrenched political powers.
In scattered protests in recent months, some Egyptians have defied occasionally harsh responses from security forces to demand political change, notable in a country where a long-standing emergency law allows indefinite detention and rights groups complain that police brutality is commonplace.
The government says its allows freedom of expression.
In practice, minimum-wage workers get around $18 a month, but protesters are demanding the government implement a court order that would boost the figure and help millions of poor in the Arab world’s most populous nation cope with rising prices.
For many in Egypt, where U.N. figures put gross domestic product per capita at $1,780, the call for political change may be secondary to more basic demands for better income and jobs.
Egypt’s economy has grown robustly in recent years, but many people say only the wealthy have benefited. After the world food crisis in 2007-08, which triggered bread shortages and protests, inflation has eased. But workers say their problems endure.
"Prices are rising and workers’ wages are declining. Meat has become a luxury item that most of us cannot afford," said Hisham Oakal, a worker at a factory in Egypt’s Nile Delta.
Source: Africa World News
(Visited 1 times, 1 visits today)