CAIRO: The People's Assembly s legislative committee said the Ministry of Justice's decisions that sparked the legal specialists' crisis were "illegal. In a report about the crisis, the committee urged the ministry to present the new specialists law to the parliament in November, bringing a four-month crisis to an end. Legal specialists have ended their strike and returned to their offices after Minister of Justice Mamdouh Marei agreed on the legislative committee's demands to enhance specialists' conditions and provide them with legal protection, a parliamentary statement said. Specialists staged strikes for three months, demanding the cancellation of periodic book number eight which allows them to examine case files only inside the courtroom and obligatory appointment at courtrooms. They were also calling for an amendment to Law 96/1952 as well as better pay and work conditions. We value the efforts of the PA and [Speaker] Fathy Sorour in ending our crisis as they were the first to hear our demands and to put in force the concept of dialogue in solving problems, read a statement by all legal specialist in Egypt, released after their meeting in Sharqeya. Our sit-in is a source of pride for us; it reflected a civilized way of protesting that goes in accordance with the values and ideals of legal specialists, it added. We now consider our crisis over, Mohamed Daher Hussein, head of the legal specialists club told Daily News Egypt. Certain issues remain but we will discuss them with PA speaker Fathi Sorour, Hussein said. According to the legislative committee's report, the illegal ministerial decisions were modified in accordance with the specialists demands after the ministry issued decisions during the past week obliging official copies of case documents to be sent to specialists and appointing specialists through their office not by name. The report added that appointed specialists would be supervised by the specialists department at the ministry, not the head of the court. The appointments, it added, would only be for verbal recommendation not for the purpose of writing reports. Specialists complained that obligatory appointment requires them to write their reports on the spot without field examination or interviewing conflicting parties. The report came in favor of specialists after it backed our demands, Mahmoud El Qobeisy, head of Alexandria s legal specialists authority, told Daily News Egypt. However, this is only part of the problem; we are still waiting for a response to our financial demands and the introduction of the new specialists law to parliament, he added. The ministry has issued decisions to tie the night shift incentive payments to performance rather than attendance as the specialists had requested and to return the incentive rates that were canceled. Both were parts of the deal between the specialists and the ministry. According to El Qobeisy, the ministry hasn t executed certain terms of that deal regarding the increase in extraordinary effort incentives from 250 percent to 350 percent and increasing the medical care incentive from LE 60 to LE 700. Hussein said that the minister promised that he would look into their financial demands and that the new law is ready for submission to the PA in the next session which starts in November.
