CAIRO: The investors of the Daily News Egypt newspaper, which abruptly quit publishing and closed its doors late last month, have reportedly refused to pay their editorial staff April salaries. A statement published by former staffer Reem Abdellatif via her personal Twitter blog alleges that Investors at EMS, which include Taher Helmy, partner at Baker & Mckenzie and former Amcham chairman, Ahmed Badrawy, SODIC business development director, Hamza ElKhouli, Farid Saad, Gilbert and Reda Gargour of Lecico, have refused to pay their salaries. “Although the investors have tried to justify their illegal decision to withhold our salaries by alleging that we have withheld from them passwords to DNE's Twitter and Facebook accounts, the real issue here is that they are angered and surprised that we have pursued a law suit against them through the Egyptian labor office in an attempt to retrieve our rights,” she writes on the blog. She continues to say that, “Not only have the investors brought the newspaper to the ground with poor management skills and a failed business model over the past years, but they have failed to provide their employees with their most basic rights.” The Daily News Egypt was a partner with the International Herald Tribune (IHT) and was the only non-governmental daily print publication in the country. It had a staff 10 reporters, a small freelance budget and only one marketing person when it went under. “The company, of course, did not cover our phone bills or health benefits. In fact, many of us, after working with the company for years, were shocked to find out that we were not even provided with the minimum social insurance that we were promised in our initial contracts,” she lashes out at the company. “Yet, we were expected to cover violence during an ongoing revolution. And we did. We covered everything that we could, often feeling disheartened that we could not cover the country to our fullest potential. But we did it everyday anyway, remaining steadfast.” For now, it appears the staff and the investors will be battling it out in the courtroom and an end to the sad debacle that was the Daily News Egypt has no end.
