THE workers of the Tanta Company for Flax and Oils continued to stage their sit-in outside the Cabinet building in central Cairo Wednesday for the 10th day in a row and swore to continue picketing until their problems are solved. Tens of the company's workers, who brought bed covers and slept outside the building, said an "authoritarian" company management and financial problems made it hard for them to continue working at the company, which was privatised in 2005. "We're deprived of all our financial rights since last May," said Rizq Mohamed, one of the striking workers. "We're unable to put food on the table for our children," Mohamed, 48, added in an interview with The Egyptian Gazette. The Tanta Company for Flax and Oils was one of many State-owned companies that were let into investors' hands under Egypt's privatisation programme a few years ago. Tens of public companies were sold to investors under the programme, which has many haters among Egypt's nationalists and the opponents of the free market economy. Some people look at repeated labour strikes and attribute them to public discontent with privatisation itself. The workers of the Tanta Company for Flax and Oils said they decided to stay away from work allegedly because the company's officials used to treat them badly. This, however, is not the story Egypt's Labour Minister Aisha Abdel Hadi likes to tell. Abdel Hadi, who met the workers once, says strikes are not "proper methods" for solving disputes between workers and their administrations of their companies and factories. "The workers have caused the investor extreme losses because of their strike," she said in a telephone interview with the daily talk show "Feel At Home" on Egypt's official TV. Despite this, the workers continue to occupy the pavement outside the Cabinet building. They depend, in their food, on the generous donations of passers-by, donations which observers say reflect public sympathy with their case. "My children stopped going to school some time ago," Mohamed said. "I'm no longer able to pay for their education or food," he added.
