MINYA - In the Upper Egyptian governorate of Minya, about 245 kilometres south of Cairo, quarrying has become simultaneously a life-saving activity and a life-losing activity. Whether they are school dropouts or holders of university degrees, young villagers of Nezlet Ebeid, Tahta el-Gabal, Beni Khaled and Sawada and other hamlets seek work at the quarries in the desert hills. A few decades ago the quarry workforce mainly involved cultivators who had no land to look after. Today, rising unemployment rates, especially in southern areas, have compelled both the educated and the uneducated to seek a guaranteed work opportunity that provides a steady income with a wide range of work is available at those quarries. Mohamed Taha a 28-year old foreman actually believes that, but for the Minya quarries, a large sector of southerners would have turned into beggars. These quarries have even lured cultivators to quit ploughing the land, since the yield has not always turned to be worth a long season of hard work. In comparison, the pay for eight to ten hours a day at a quarry has, in most cases, proved to be rewarding. For Mohamed Abdel Badie a registered lawyer at the Bar Association, quarrying was the lifeboat in which he jumped to save himself from the spectre of unemployment. He did, however, try his hand at legal affairs, but he discovered that people wanted a ‘famous' lawyer to handle their cases. He applied to a number of public and private companies for a job, but he was turned down. Abdel Badie told the Arabic Radio and TV magazine how he threw away his Bar Association card deciding to go on a daily trip to the hills like many of his peers in Minya. These quarries have, however, developed a reputation as the worst sites in terms of child exploitation. According to NGO statistics, some 3,000 children between the age of l0 to l6 are engaged in work without insurance or legal rights, accounting for about one third of the total quarry workforce. With dusty faces, bent backs and rough hands these children work from dawn until 3:00 pm in winter and from 4:00pm to dawn in summer. The supposedly joyful years of childhood have been snatched from these children, who have been compelled to become breadwinners to fight poverty. Generally speaking, Minya is one of the poorest Egyptian governorates, where circumstances and poverty conspire against families there. In Upper Egypt, the death of the father means that the eldest son, whatever his age, has to throw himself into the labour market to shoulder an early responsibility as the family sustainer. Under long-standing traditions it would be shameful to allow the wife or daughters of an elderly or deceased man to work when there is a male ��" even if he is a boy as young as ten years ��" in the family. Occupational hazards and related accidental deaths have regrettably become part of the job. Accidents occur frequently such that workers have become accustomed to the idea of losing a workmate at any time. Quarrying in Minya is actually a unique world governed by its own rules. According to quarry owners it is not difficult to lay hands on a promising site in the hills and start work before even getting a licence to operate it. Hussein Khalaf, a quarry owner, admitted that he pays about LE 3,000 a year in fines to keep his unlicensed quarry going. The equipment needed ranges between three to l2 machines depending on the volume of work and total areas of the quarry. From limestone, to granite, marble, silicon or powder these quarries are a goldmine for those who know how to make use of their resources. Experts say the State has so far failed to utilise such potential which could realise proceeds far exceeding oil revenues. In the view of professor Mohamed Hassan Awad of the Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, the use of primitive quarrying methods pose a threat to reserves. He called for the formation of an ad-hoc authority that would supervise such lucrative activities, engage the expertise of qualified human resources, conduct studies on each and every tapped quarry and above all regulate labour conditions.
