CAIRO: The trial of three Tanta Flax and Oils officials accused of violating the rights of workers at the company was postponed to June 16, 2010 on Wednesday, following a session during which the court initially refused to hear the case. Tanta Flax company director Abdellah El-Ka'aky, commissioner-general Mohamed El-Seehy and general manager Mohsen El-Ayyat are accused of dismissing employees arbitrarily and, failing to pay salaries and obstructing production. Commissioner-General The Center for Trade Union and Workers Rights (CTUWS) said in a statement issued Wednesday that at the start of the court session, “the court refused to hear the case with the excuse that it did not have the case file, claiming that it had not yet arrived from the public prosecutor.” According to CTUWS, “hundreds of Tanta Flax workers” responded by assembling outside the courthouse and threatened to go to the public prosecution office in Cairo to demand an explanation for the disappearance of the case file. “The prosecution office handed over the case file after the court session had finished, in the face of the insistence by workers and lawyers that it must be produced,” the statement reads. CTUWS says that the judge then resumed the court session and adjourned the case, granting lawyers' requests that they be allowed to raise a claim for civil compensation against the three defendants, and that they be given a complete copy of the case file. Tanta workers have staged a series of industrial actions since the company's privatization in 2005 over unpaid financial entitlements and alleged unfair dismissals. In February, they staged a 15-day sit-in outside Cairo's cabinet office for six demands. Following mediation by the manpower ministry, the sit-in ended with an offer of an early retirement package of LE 40,000 and a sum the equivalent of two months' wages. Al-Ahram subsequently reported that over 400 workers had opted to take early retirement, but the failure of workers' to receive these payouts prompted them to again protest in Cairo in April, when it was announced that El-Ka'aky, El-Seehy and El-Ayyat would be sent to trial.
