CAIRO: Journalists from independent daily Al-Badeel continued their sit-in yesterday, a day after the newspaper went into liquidation.
Journalists staged a protest on Saturday outside the Journalists Syndicate, the same day the decision was made to dissolve the company which publishes Al-Badeel during a general assembly meeting.
In April financial problems forced the newspaper’s management to turn the paper from a daily to a weekly.
The sit-in was prompted when the weekly edition was axed last week.
Ahmed Harbiya, one of the Al-Badeel journalists involved in the sit-in, said that “there is absolutely no hope of Al-Badeel being re-issued, saying “the return of the paper is nothing but an illusion now.
Harbiya said that journalists are now protesting for recognition of their financial entitlements. “Journalists have been working for this paper for two years and have rights, Harbiya said.
Al-Badeel editor Khaled El-Balshy added that he expects “a long legal battle.
However, Sabry Fawzy, a member of Al-Badeel s executive board, told Daily News Egypt that journalists are not entitled to financial compensation.
He added that the decision to liquidate the company was taken in accordance with legislation which provides that a company goes into liquidation when it loses half of its capital. Al-Badeel, Fawzy said, has lost double the amount of its capital.
However, labor lawyer Haitham Mohamadein disagrees with this analysis.
He says that Al-Badeel journalists are entitled to financial compensation to the value of two months salary for every year they worked, by virtue of the fact that they were laid off arbitrarily.
Mohamadein added that the protesting journalists did not have a hand in the paper s bankruptcy, nor for the success or failure of its management, and their financial rights are therefore unaffected by the state of the company s liquidity. -Additional reporting by Sara Elkamel.