CAIRO: About 35 reporters at daily independent Nahdet Masr newspaper ended a three-day sit-in after a syndicate board member promised to intervene in their current crisis with the administration, journalist Radwan Adam told Daily News Egypt Thursday. The Nahdet Masr journalists started earlier this week a sit-in to protest alleged unpaid and low salaries. “The board member, who declined to be named, promised to solve the crisis and the colleagues accordingly suspended their sit-in for the time being,” Adam, also a coordinator with the Reporters Without Rights movement, added. The reporters claimed that the administration deliberately delayed their payments, while imposing penalties on some of them like deducting 50 percent of their salaries for insignificant reasons. “On the other hand, the administration did not keep its promise of raising their salaries to LE 1,500,” Adam said. “The administration also neglected their demands and requests to hold a meeting to settle the dispute,” he added. The movement called on the head of the Journalists' Syndicate, whom they described as “only a defender of chief editors and board chairmen,” to mediate in the current crisis. The movement further urged the syndicate board to immediately launch an investigation and seek solutions to the problems. Nahdet Masr is published with an off-shore license, which does not allow reporters working there to join the syndicate. “The newspaper editor-in-chief Mohamed El-Shabba [procrastinated in] seeking to settle the newspaper's status to help the reporters join the syndicate,” Adam explained. But a Syndicate board member denied that this is the editor's responsibility. “This information is not accurate as the editor's job has to do with editorial issues, while the newspaper license is the responsibility of the board chairman or the publisher,” syndicate board member Abeer Saady told Daily News Egypt. El-Shabba could not be reached for comment till press time.
