Many Egyptian governorates on Thursday witnessed protests demanding better living conditions, better work conditions and higher wages. In Assiut, Upper Egypt, hundreds of Sedfa residents blocked the Cairo-Assiut Road demanding the continuation of paving the main road leading to the city and the inner roads of the city. The citizens lit tires and waste on fire, leading to clashes using bladed weapons and batons between pedestrians and demonstrators. In Minya, some 25 workers dismissed from the Sugar & Integrated Industries Company prevented workers of the first shift from entering the company's headquarters and put rock blocks outside the main door of the company, threatening to storm into the building in reaction to board chairman Hassan Kamel's decision to dismiss them. In Qena, scores of the beneficiaries of the agricultural reform project organized a sit-in at the project's directorate in Nagaa Hammadi to demand stopping the elections of the Agricultural Cooperative Societies in protest of the nomination of a former National Democratic Party member. In Qalyubiya, scores of temporary workers in schools and education directorates organized sit-ins outside the office of the Education Ministry deputy, Mahmoud al-Amreety, and tried to storm into the office demanding to be on fixed payrolls. In Alexandria, some 200 temporary workers at the Middle East Oil Refining Company renewed their sit-in inside the headquarters of the company to demand being on a fixed payroll. Some 400 workers from Egyptian Project Operation & Maintenance, Alexandria Petroleum Maintenance Company and GASCO organized a sit-in demanding better wages. Scores of workers at Abu Hammad companies located on the 23rd kilometer of the Cairo-Alexandria desert road continued a sit-in outside the office of the manpower directorate demanding the disbursement of late salaries and the adjustment of data at the social insurance department. In Suez, bakery workers demonstrated outside the governorate headquarters demanding a pay increase and the establishment of a new syndicate. Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
