CAIRO: Public Transportation Authority workers and drivers called off a strike planned for Sunday following concessions by the authority's management. Mona Mostafa, head of the authority, issued a decree Saturday stating that the authority will pay the incentives and that the Central Agency for Management and Administration approved the decision. She also suspended the authority's police and consultants' incentives. "We now await the approval of the Minister of Finance,” Ali Fatouh, head of the Independent Syndicate of Public Transportation Authority Workers, told Daily News Egypt. “We had decided that we won't suspend the strike until we get an official decision and we felt that the management responded to us." The syndicate called for a general strike Sunday, Aug. 28, to demand the promised 200 percent of reward incentives after the authority's officials told them that they will not be paid. "The consultants' incentives are worth LE 1,750,000 a month and are paid based on the total salary not the basic salary like us," Fatouh said. The government decided to pay the reward incentives starting July to all government workers to raise their total salary to LE 700 as announced earlier and to decrease wage disparities. He said that they are forming a delegation to meet Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to present their demands. "Workers are threatening to organize a strike on the first day of the academic year in schools if they don't receive the incentive which will result in a crisis," Fatouh said. Public transportation workers previously organized two successful general strikes in May 2007 and August 2009. Workers at a major bus hub in Cairo's Dar El Salam district called Athar El-Naby had organized a strike last week to protest deductions from their salaries.
