CAIRO: Employees of the Nile Cotton company are staging a sit-in after the company administration failed to pay out December salaries, according to a report in Al-Masry Al-Youm on Monday. Hundreds of workers are protesting in the company's Mahalla, Beheira and Minya branches and are staging sit-ins. A worker in the storeroom of the company's Mahalla branch, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Daily News Egypt that some 126 workers began the sit-in this week. He said that the company's administration has not given workers a reason for the delay in wage payments. The worker added that the mobile phone of company director Abdel Alim El-Saify is constantly switched off. According to the news report, the workers are calling for payment of their wages and a rise of the social allowance they receive from 10 percent to 30 percent. The article quotes Rabea Ali Hassan, a member of the company's trade union, as saying that the company plans to pay out only half of the workers' entitlements in order to force them to resign ahead of the sell off of the company's land and assets. Mohamed Abo Gamoos, the general director of the company's Itay Baroud, branch is quoted in the article as saying that Nile Cotton is suffering from a "liquidity crisis and urged workers to return to work.
