Parliament’s labour committee plans to address the Ministries of Planning, Industry, Business Sector, and Social Solidarity in order to look into the issue of providing insurance to seasonal workers, in accordance with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s initiative to provide insurance coverage for temporary employees.

Khaled Abdelaziz, member of the labour committee, said the committee will prepare for meetings with the six ministries in order to lay out a strategy to provide the insurance.

The number of seasonal workers is 1.2 million, working temporarily at specific jobs, based on the data of the annual aggregated statistics for 2016 issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).

Seasonal employment represents 5% of the total labour force in Egypt, estimated to include 25.3 million people. Men represent the larger share, 53.5% versus 46.5% women.

Abdelaziz said that meetings will be held with all the concerned parties at different syndicates in order to look into the implementation of the president’s initiative and looking into the extent to which a legislation is needed to cover social and health insurance for these workers.

“We are considering issuing legislation that regulates founding an authority for non-regular employment with branches across governorates to include the workers who do not fall under the labour law. The article of the law addressing non-regular labour must be expanded. This article stipulates that a fund must be established to protect them,” Abdelaziz added.

Abdelaziz said that the committee approved the draft labour law submitted by the government and has referred it to parliament’s general committee to set a date for discussion and a final vote on the law.

He added that the committee will discuss a draft law presented by committee members to allow pensioners to establish a syndicate for themselves to watch over their interests.