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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999 Issue No. 453 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999 Issue No. 453
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Study Special Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The missing year
By Amira El NoshokatyAlthough the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) is paying compensation to Egyptian migrant workers who lost their money in Iraq due to the Gulf War in 1990/91, the UNCC lists do not include those Egyptians who worked in Iraq prior to the war, specifically during 1988/89.
Before this period, Egyptian workers in Iraq had no problem transferring their savings. But the failure of Iraq to return money earned by Egyptians in the fiscal year before the war has been overshadowed by the issue of compensation for those who lost their savings because of the war.
When the Gulf War broke out in August 1990, the annual savings of some 300,000 Egyptian workers were not transferred to Egypt due to the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. One of those workers was Gad Gad, now living in Al-Tayibba village in Al-Daqahliya governorate. Gad started working in Iraq in 1979. He came back to Egypt in 1989, and the Gulf War broke out a few months later. For the last ten years, he has been waiting for the savings which he accumulated during his stay in Iraq to be transferred to Egypt.
"We asked more than fifty times in the banks, but they said it was hopeless because all Iraqi bank accounts were frozen," Gad said. "Now after 10 years, the UNCC is compensating those who were negatively affected by the Gulf War. I am not one of them," he added.
According to Iraqi law, all foreign workers' savings had to be converted to dollars before being transferred to their home countries. The Iraqis set a maximum limit of $800 annually on the amount of money each individual could transfer. "That was the custom," Gad said.
All foreigners working in Iraq received $100 as traveling expenses when they left the country. When Egyptians returned home, they received their savings from one of three banks: the Arab African International Bank, Al-Rafideen Bank and Alexandria Bank.
In Al-Tayibba village, out of the 15,000 villagers who worked in Iraq nearly 1,000 have not yet been compensated. "There is not a single house or family in Al-Tayibba that has not been badly affected by the Gulf war," said Mansour Mohammed, a 45-year-old peasant who travelled to Iraq to work as a builder/mason. After losing his savings of $720 ten years ago, he came back home and worked as a street vendor selling vegetables to support his five children.
Abdel-Nasser Gaber, 48-years-old, used to work in Iraq as a barber. Now, he practices his profession in his house in Al-Tayibba. He also is waiting for his $720 transfer. His money transfer paper lies among other "yellow" money transfer documents piled up on the floor of the small, square room in Gad's house where the interview was conducted, representing the dreams of the poor people that never came true.
"War victims they say, but what about us?" asked Gad. "We are the ones who really suffered. We were working in Iraq long before the others who worked for only a few months, sometimes for no more than a few days, before the war broke out. Those people got paid because their names are on the UNCC compensation lists. We, on the other hand, have not been paid our money up till now," Gad said.
Medhat Tawfiq, manager of the Arab African International Bank office in Cairo, explained that Iraqi banks sent the "yellow" money transfer papers for 1988/89 to this bank. "However, the Iraqi government never transferred the funds to cover such orders," he added.
"The problem is that people do not understand that the bank is only processing the UNCC compensation for people who were negatively affected by the Gulf War in 1990," Tawfiq said. Starting 1990, the UN has been responsible for overseeing the Iraqi payments, but for the years prior to that date, the Iraqi government is the one responsible for payments.
Meanwhile, the villagers have started to accept the status quo. After a long period of waiting and visiting the bank's Cairo office every week, they returned to Al-Tayibba, desperate to find work.
"At first I searched for any kind of work. When people needed extra help during the harvest season, I was there," Gad recalls. But working all day for a daily wage of LE2 was hardly sufficient for a man with a wife and three children. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that 15,000 other people had returned home from Iraq, and were also looking for work, which made employment opportunities scarce. "So I left my wife and children and went job hunting in Cairo where I finally found work as a cook," added Gad. His financial state, though much better and more stable, was not enough to keep his eldest son, Ahmed, in school. He dropped out at the age of 14 and went to Cairo to work as a waiter.
Although Gad has only an old, wrinkled piece of yellow paper whose fading ink shows nothing but his long years of waiting, he still wishes to have his money back to be able to contribute to his daughter's marriage expenses.
