CAIRO: Workers and employees in Telecom Egypt corporate (TE) denied Tuesday any plans to cut off communications during their protests against the administration. "We will not cut off communications, whether land lines, internet or international lines. We do not want to harm the country and the citizens," announced the TE Coalition, a group of protesting TE employees. At a protest and press conference Tuesday in front of the Dokki hub, employees asserted that they did not obstruct the140 directory service and will not block the roads or harm public security. They alleged that the board had transferred all 140 calls received to an unknown destination and hence were responsible for the disruption. "I believe they transferred the calls to the 111 center which tells customers that they are upgrading the phone numbers … and that the customer will have to pay the fixed rate for that call," said Mohamed Ahmed, who works at the customer service department. In the conference dubbed "Rescuing TE," the coalition said they only have three demands. They said their main demand is to investigate the administrative corruption rampant in the corporate office, insisting that they had documents to prove the corruption of the board. One of the documents, they said, reveals that the board has been slack in collecting accrued fees by a company owned by the sons of the ousted president Hosni Mubarak, Gamal and Alaa. The Egyptian state owns 80 percent of TE shares. "TE employed people under a job category called ‘special skills' who are earning huge salaries," Ahmed said. These employees, he said, do not even have a college degree. “They either carry a diploma or a general secondary certificate." "We will hand these documents to the office of the Prosecutor General and the Prime Minister today based on a preset date," announced the coalition. Members of the coalition said they will continue their sit-in until the government meets their demand to dismiss of the entire Board of Directors. They also demanded the release of five employees who were arrested for 15 days pending investigations after being accused of allegedly locking up Mohamed Abdel Rahim, the company's CEO, in his office last Thursday. They claim that Abdel Rahim had locked himself fearing the crowd. "They claimed that the five employees were fired and were trying to force their way back to the company," Ahmed said. "They also claimed that the protestors are thugs.” Employees in other branches, especially in Alexandria and Luxor participated in the protest, stressing that these rumors were falsely propagated by Abdel Rahim. "We started our peaceful protests by holding talks with members of the board. But after the talks they marginalized our main demands and confined them to demands to restructure salaries," said Hager Aboul Fadl, a protester. Fadl said that a lot of TE workers refused the idea of strikes and protests at first. "However, when the management slighted our demands and had five employees arrested, we were all provoked to defend ourselves," she said. Protesters said the revolution is still ongoing and that they want to purge the corporation. They called upon Abdel Rahim and the board to step down like Mubarak. "The stubbornness of Mubarak will not benefit you. Go away as he finally did," they chanted. "Leave and show mercy to this country. Stop the squandering of public funds," said Mohamed Ibrahim, addressing the board. A high-ranking official in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that the minister, Mohamed Salim, adopted a new salary scheme that would trim down the salaries of the CEO, Executive Vice President and other top officials at TE. "This move comes is part of an extensive restructuring of salaries of all employees to achieve justice and equality among workers in complete transparency," said the official. Daily News Egypt was unable to reach any TE officials by press time.
