Hundreds of sanitation workers employed by the Nahdat Misr Company in Alexandria extended their strike into the fifth day on Monday.
The striking workers allege that they have not received their salaries for the month of February and have only received half of their due pay for January.
The workers protested inside the headquarters of the company demanding the payment of late salaries, accusing the management of “avoiding” the workers and of “blaming the monetary problems on the governorate”.
“The bosses told us that the financial departments got the payment check, but no one got his money,” one of the workers told Daily News Egypt Monday.
The sanitation workers presented a petition to Osama Al-Khouly, the general manger of the company, asking for the full payment of outstanding wages, the prompt payment of future wages, an increase in employment compensation, and an end to biometric scanning.
The workers stated that, during labour negotiations, Nahdat Misr appealed to outstanding debt owed to the governorate to explain its failure to make prompt payments.
Al-Khouly confirmed this claim when he made a statement to the press on Sunday wherein he said that the company was unable to pay the entirety of its staff, and thus decided to pay half the workers. The company alleged that the governorate had delayed providing its payment for the contracted work.
“The workers escalated their reaction quickly, after the governorate delayed the monthly payment. This means that half the payment was received, while the other half was delayed,” Al-Khouly said Sunday.
Nahdat Misr Company is one of the private companies contracted by the Egyptian government to manage security at various private intuitions and the implementation of infrastructure projects. The company was founded in 2011 after former prime minister Ibrahim Mehleb, a current advisor to President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, advocated for the privatisation of government services.
Since the beginning of the strike on Thursday, rubbish has accumulated on the streets in Alexandria. Several state media outlets and pro-government TV channels have focused media coverage on “the abundance of trash bags in the streets” as a result of the strike.
Last week, Alexandria witnessed another strike by public transportation drivers, who called for the suspension of “unnecessary taxes which cut from the bonuses of the drivers”. However, the strike ended after the army deployed military buses to transport passengers.
Similarly, pro-state media blamed the resulting traffic congestion and the discontent of passengers on the protesting drivers, without addressing the concerns of the drivers.