Experts at the Justice Ministry have been pressing for their demands, Mona El-Nahhas reports On 6 July dozens of experts working for the Justice Ministry staged a sit-in in front of their ministry building protesting against a decree issued earlier last month by the justice minister's former assistant judge, Intesar Neseem, regulating their job. The 10-day sit-in was not the first staged by experts to show their disapproval. On 17 and 23 June two symbolic sit-ins were organised and experts vowed not to end their protest until the ministry abolishes the decree which they see as harming the interests of nearly 3,000 experts in Egypt. Around 800 telegrams were sent to President Hosni Mubarak urging him to intervene. A lawsuit is now before the Administrative Court seeking that the decree be annulled. The decree imposes a ban on referring lawsuits heard in court to experts to get their opinion in certain technical aspects related to the case. Lawsuits which are now in the offices of experts should be returned to the courts, the decree said. Engineering, accountancy and agriculture are the three main fields the Justice Ministry's experts deal with. "In violation of the law, the decree obliges experts to go to courts and examine files there," Akram El-Deeb, a protester told Al-Ahram Weekly on Sunday. To take the file of the lawsuit to their offices, experts should get official approval from the court panel hearing the lawsuit if the panel deems it necessary. "Such a decree will hinder experts from doing their work properly," El-Deeb said, adding that moving to courts to examine cases will add extra financial burdens on experts in addition to tiring them out. "This, of course, will badly affect the monthly production of the expert and accordingly lead to a pay-cut in his salary," El-Deeb noted. However, according to statements by ministry officials, the aim behind the decree is to protect lawsuits from getting lost or damaged and to keep them safe after several cases of lost documents were reported. Judge Hassan Abdel-Razeq, the justice minister's assistant in the experts sector, said in a detailed statement issued earlier this week that the decree will help end the accumulation of lawsuits at experts' offices. Sometimes, it takes an expert years to give his technical opinion in a lawsuit, slowing down litigation. Being under the direct supervision of the judge, the expert will be required to work according to a specific time frame. According to recent statistics, 255,000 lawsuits are pending with experts waiting to give an opinion, the statement said. In 2007, a ministerial decree was issued in which some experts were delegated to work in first degree courts; special offices were allocated for them. In cases which do not require witnesses being heard or moving to certain official bodies to examine documents, the expert was asked by means of the ministerial decree to give an opinion in court during the hearing. According to the statement, the experiment was a success, helping settle a large number of lawsuits in a short time. Following the crisis, it was widely rumoured that the ministry was considering abolishing the decree, however, sources close to the minister denied the ministry's intention to back off. The sources stressed that Justice Minister Mamdouh Marei discussed with 41 senior experts across Egypt the reasons behind the decree's passage. Annulling the decree was not the only demand voiced by experts. Since the 1990s, experts have been calling for amending the royal enactment 96/1952 governing their work on the grounds that it was no longer relevant to their job circumstances. "It's unacceptable for experts to work under a law issued at the time of King Farouk, a law which now fails to meet their current financial demands," Mohamed Shehata, another protester, told the Weekly. In 1998, a draft law prepared by then justice minister Farouk Seif El-Nasr received approval from the Shura Council. Although the draft was referred to the People's Assembly for endorsement, it was shelved. The same attempt was repeated in 2002, when an MP presented the draft to the PA's Legislative Committee for discussion. However, no further steps were taken. In the most recent parliamentary session, the draft was submitted for the third time. The Legislative Committee approved it and recommended that it be discussed by the PA. "Until now, though, nothing has happened," Shehata said. Experts also called for improving their financial conditions by increasing incentives. Replying to the demands voiced by the experts, Abdel-Razeq stressed that a new draft law regulating work and taking into account all their demands is now being prepared and is to be submitted to the People's Assembly during the parliamentary session starting November. As to the experts' financial demands, Abdel-Razeq said in the statement that their incentives were doubled in 2007, leading to a tangible increase in income.
