CAIRO - Workers at the Telecommunications Ministry yesterday staged a mass demonstration in downtown Cairo, calling for the end of the regime, higher pay and taking alleged corrupt officials to court. The Telecommunication Ministry is the biggest in the region. Its 27,000-strong workforce has been demanding the Ahmed Shafiq Government into making economic concessions, raising their salaries and giving the part-time workers and administrators full time jobs. The workers, who threatened to storm out of their Ministry and join the demonstrators in Al Tahrir Square, chanting: “Down, down with the regime and down with graft.” The protest inside Cairo's main Telephone Exchange Building began by demanding a rise in the national minimum wage, which does not exceed LE300 at present. The demonstration was called while thousands of protesters started thronging into the iconic square to join what is called "The One Million Protest”. "The minimum salary in the Ministry has been held at LE350 a month since the year 2000 – while inflation has rocketed. The workers are demanding the Government to raise the minimum wage to LE3,000 a month," says Ahmed Ibrahim, a temporary technician. The protest was organised in secret by activists in the Ministry, he said, warning that his colleagues would move to Al Tahrir Square if the Minister, Tareq Kamel, did not respond to their demands. The workers are fighting over local economic demands and made appeals to Prosecutor General Abdul Maguid Mahmoud to intervene against the Ministry's bosses. "We will march through the streets waving loaves of bread, telephone sets and chant: ‘We are sick of eating beans while the Ministry's top officials eat chicken and pigeons,'” he added. Saeed Mansour, a union organiser and activist in the Telecommunications' Workers' Union, told the crowds: “We are demanding social justice for all workers in Egypt. We want all the Ministry's resources and revenues shared equally between workers and the officials.” “Following the massive protests, which have been rocking the nation since January 25, a new struggle has shifted back into the Egyptian working class," Fayed el-Mweilhi, a telecommunications worker, said. Meanwhile, hundreds of Cairo white taxi drivers and Ministry of Education employees held a similar protest demanding better wages and salaries. The drivers want the Government to reduce the monthly instalments they pay to the banks for their taxis. The Government was yesterday forced to back down and relieve the drivers from paying the February instalment.The Ministry employees are demanding higher salaries and full jobs too. The protest by the telecommunications workers was the first time since January 25 that national demands have been raised in mass street demonstrations that swept the nation in what is known as the “Tahrir Intifadah” against the regime.
