14 - 20 December 2000
Issue No.512
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 14 - 20 December 2000 Issue No.512 |
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'Men must make a living'
Deep in the desert in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Minya, a group of labourers is hard at work in the early afternoon converting a hill into bricks. Although they had been working for at least six hours, they had another four ahead of them as they cut the white limestone from the hills into neat rectangular bricks. The little boys on the site also work 10-hour days. They do the "menial work" such as carrying 18 kilogramme bricks on their shoulders and are required to step across the naked electric wires which connect a nearby generator to the site. At the end of the day, they will be transported home in rickety trucks with LE5-15 in their pockets.
A few hours after sunset, a tense crowd gathers at the entrance of the Minya General Hospital. At least 15 workers had been badly injured in an accident on their way home from the quarry. One man is already known to be dead, and in the next couple of hours another two will also die. Arguments break out as hospital administrators permit entrance only to people who have bought 50 piastre tickets and the information received by those outside regarding the condition of their injured relations is vague. "We live with this fear," explained a man as he traversed the corridors of the hospital in search of the survivors, "In our villages, the men can only find work in the quarries and everyone knows that if you work at the mountain you are risking your life."
The Minya Governorate has announced that these workers provide the local treasury with an estimated LE10 million annually and the product of their hard labour is used nationwide by contractors and major industries such as those for ceramics, paint, pharmaceuticals and even sugar.
Yet there are no comprehensive official statistics regarding the number of people who actually work the Minya quarries which cover an area of 300 square kilometres in the eastern desert, beginning east of Minya City and extending north to the town of Samalout.
The Better Life Association for Comprehensive Development (BLACD), a non-profit association established in Minya in 1995, has documented that 13,000 to 15,000 people work in the quarries, including 2,000 children below the age of 16.
According to Maher Bushra, BLACD's chairman, "Quarry workers, who make up the majority of employed residents in 13 east bank villages, suffer a very high number of casualties. If there is an accident and a worker survives, in most cases he will have lost nothing less than an arm or a leg, if not more. Transportation to the more remote quarries is hazardous and accidents in which lives are lost are common, yet the closest health facility is a half an hour to an hour's drive from the quarry sites."
Such a situation prompted BLACD's involvement with quarry labour on several levels. This involvement includes direct assistance, such as providing injured workers with artificial limbs; commissioning the design and building of safer machines; opening channels of communication with relevant government authorities and assisting in the organisation of the workers themselves.
A member of the newly developed Wadi El-Nil Association for the Care of Quarry Workers (affiliated to BLACD) is Samir, an energetic middle-aged man whose work includes arranging funeral procedures for the dead, recording the medications needed by patients and following up on the filing of police reports so as to ensure compensation where warranted. "What these workers need most is proper social and health insurance," Samir tells Al-Ahram Weekly.
"To obtain a licence, quarry owners must insure workers, but the workers are not aware that they need to pay their share in order to make insurance effective. Also, they do not know that when an accident happens -- even if they are not insured -- they are still eligible for compensation in a variety of forms which is why a police report must be filed immediately."
A deceased worker's family is entitled to a monthly retirement pension of LE70 to LE100. "In cases of extreme poverty, anything is better than nothing," said Bushra.
Between 1950 and 1978 the public sector Modern Home Company was the only company operating quarries. Today BLACD estimates that there are 172 quarries that are officially registered and 50 others functioning without proper registration. Bushra explains, "This is the private sector component of quarry activity which includes five basic activities: the quarrying of marble and stone for construction; limestone grinders which cut large stones into various grades of gravel used in ceramics; furnaces which convert stone into lime to be used in the construction, paint and even sugar industries."
Other workers in the industry chisel stone to shape it into steps -- the specialty of two villages in particular -- while another group is involved in collecting stones broken by the use of explosives.
Public business sector enterprises include the Beni Khaled Cement Company and the Iron and Steel Company quarries. Bushra estimates that both of these employ only 15 per cent of the total of those working in the industry.
The growth of the quarry sector paralleled the phenomenal construction boom of the late seventies and eighties. "People found the sector lucrative and there are all different kinds of quarry operations. One type is the big money operation, another is [owned by] professionals such as doctors who have cashed in on the boom." He added that there are also groups of farmers running such businesses. Typically, four or five small-scale farmers would sell their land holdings and put the money into a quarry -- an enterprise which today has become more lucrative than farming. "In Minya, this is one of the few sectors which is still a money maker," points out Bushra.
The new industrial city of Minya is a huge empty plot divided into smaller plots by large neatly paved roads. Only four factories are operating in this desert city. "People here are very poor because investment has not taken off and migration to the Gulf has all but come to a standstill. Unemployment nationwide means fewer opportunities in other governorates and people are pushed up the mountain in spite of the risks they have to take," continued Bushra.
He suggests that some of the money being made by the Quarries Authority be spent on the direct producers, a suggestion that the governorate has yet to respond to.
In the meantime, a worker covered in white film told the Weekly, "The mountain is a vicious place to work. I know that by the time I am 40, if I survive, I will be good for nothing after having worked here. But what choice do we have? Men must make a living."
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