HUNDREDS of thousands of Egyptians started on Sunday to disburse their so-called yellow remittances, or compensations for assets lost by Egyptian workers in Iraq as a result of the Gulf War. The compensation covers the period from May 1989 to June 1990. Four banks will be disbursing these remittances for the next two months. The banks are Banque Misr, the National Bank of Egypt, the Bank of Alexandria and the Arab African International Bank. According to the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), the beneficiaries do not have to be clients of the bank they are receiving the remittances from. They are free to choose which branch to withdraw their disbursements from. But the first days saw congestion at many banks from the early morning, because of a lack of awareness among beneficiaries who did not know about the procedures involved in receiving the money. One beneficiary waiting in line at a participating bank in the Cairo district of Haram told Al-Ahram Weekly that he came all the way from the governorate of Kafr Al-Sheikh to get his remittance. "No one told me that I could disburse it from a branch near my residence," the 55-year-old man said. Another man in his 70s said he was unable to disburse his remittance because he did not know that the bank required him to show his passport. Many other misunderstandings took place because people could not visit the CBE website, which had listed beneficiaries' names and clearly indicated they could go to any branch they choose. The website also identified the procedures beneficiaries needed to carry out to receive their yellow remittances. Following years of negotiation between the governments of Egypt and Iraq, they reached an agreement after a recent meeting in Baghdad between the Egyptian foreign minister and his Iraqi counterpart. The Iraqi minister said his country is committed to returning yellow remittances to Egyptians, as a sign of respect for Iraq's obligations to other countries. The compensation deal involves paying $408 million to more than 637,000 beneficiaries who rushed to the banks starting Sunday, for money they thought they had lost forever.
