MORE EGYPTIANS JOIN RANKS OF POOR WHILE RICH GET RICHER

From CIC Friday Magazine --

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1. MORE EGYPTIANS JOIN RANKS OF POOR WHILE RICH GET RICHER
[By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry]
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CAIRO, Egypt - I cannot recall any occasion in recent history when Egyptian
university professors threatened to stage a national strike, much less
actually do so. Ever since my own time among their ranks during the late
1960s, it just never happened.

Today, I still have peers, colleagues and former students who hold long
term positions at Egypt's national universities. We weren't paid well back
then, but just as in the past, many academics and other professionals
manage to obtain a few years of lucrative extra work in rich Gulf
countries, allowing them to supplement their low Egyptian salaries with
savings from abroad.

But even "moonlighting" isn't enough any more. The financial condition of
Egyptian professors has deteriorated massively over the past decade. Today,
their average monthly salary stands at US$544 and lags far below the
current inflation rate. By comparison, Egyptian private universities offer
their professors about ten times the salaries paid by national
institutions, yet they just barely manage.

So now history is being made, with professors in the country's national
universities demanding a modest 80-per cent wage increase -- just to reach
the minimal standard of living they had 10 years ago. The government has
promised only to "study" the situation.

Egyptian government figures have pegged the annual inflation rate at 12 per
cent, but experts are saying it's really much higher, especially when the
rising cost for basic items, some reaching 70 percent, is factored in. Even
though the exchange rate between the American dollar and the Egyptian pound
is declining, prices are still going up, signaling that the economy is in
real trouble.

University professors are not the only ones steadily joining the ranks of
the working-poor in my native land. The Egyptian Medical Doctors'
Association recently announced plans to stage a sit-in and organize
protests to win more pay for its members from the Ministry of Health. The
basic monthly salary for a new graduate MD working for the government is
$40 (no, that wasn't a typo - I did mean forty dollars!). The vast majority
of them cannot afford to open new private practices, which are urgently
needed in many parts of the country. A very small minority of new MDs goes
into private practice only because their parents are doctors with already-
established practices, or are wealthy enough to fund their start-up costs.

Public school teachers are even lower on the wage ladder. Those fortunate
enough to find jobs in the first place get just one dollar a day and
receive no pay for vacation periods when schools are not in session. Many
opt to work instead (or hold double jobs) as taxi drivers and waiters,
earning tips to compensate for their low salaries. UN figures show that 40
percent of Egyptians earn less than 2 dollars a day.

The situation has become so serious that basic food items are often priced
beyond reach for Egypt's poor. Bread, which is subsidized by the
government, has become scarce and 15 people recently died when bread
lineups stampeded. It is all too common now to hear reports of parents
committing suicide out of despair, because they can no longer afford to
feed their children.

The government claims that rising food prices are due to worldwide price
increases; and while this is a poor excuse for the little that has been
done to rectify the problem, it is at least partly true. Egypt imports more
than half its requirements in wheat and beans, which are the only source of
protein for more than 90 percent of the population. Most families can't
afford to eat meat more than three or four times a year.

A major reason why food availability and distribution have become such
critical problems is that Egypt has no national plan for food self-
sufficiency (as does India, for example) and the situation is worsening
every day. Many politicians have confided to me a shocking revelation --
that the U.S., for political and economic reasons - has always been opposed
to any policy by any Egyptian government to implement plans for food self-
sufficiency.

When a brave young Egyptian film director produced a powerful documentary
showing how the nation's poor actually live, he could not hold an audience.
The film was so depressing that viewers would exclaim aloud in disbelief
and walk out of the theater midway through it. What that film and plain
statistics show is that the gap between the very rich and the desperately
poor in Egypt is widening at an alarming rate; and what used to be called
the "middle class" has lost so much ground it has almost ceased to exist.

Forbes Magazine recently counted four Egyptians from one family, the
Sawiris, who have joined the ranks of global multi-billionaires. Their
combined wealth is in excess of US$20 billion. But none of them builds
hospitals, schools, universities, research facilities, or training centres
to improve the conditions of their own people.

So even though Egypt's economic growth rate was 7.1 per cent last year, the
country's grossly skewed distribution of wealth is threatening social
peace.

And the government's aggressive policy of privatization is further
compounding the problem. Worse still, it does not retain any ownership
share in the public sector services it sells. Nor does it regulate the
market even for basic food items (apart from inadequate bread subsidies).
It also relinquishes some services at fire-sale prices - such as air-wave
license fees to high-profit wireless communication companies. And in a
country where the Nile historically supplied the entire nation with potable
drinking water (and could still do so with wise management), public water
supplies cannot be trusted and those who can afford it, buy environmentally
costly bottled water.

Similarly, the rich can afford to escape Cairo's heavily polluted air on
weekends to relax at their Mediterranean villas; but for those of the
general population who must stay within the city day in and day out, cancer
rates are rapidly increasing. The rich continue to send their children to
private schools and universities and these lucky few know they are
guaranteed jobs after graduation in companies owned by their parents,
families, or their families' friends; meanwhile unemployment among the so-
called middle class and below is reaching more than 50 per cent.

Finally, I asked a friend, who is an academic and a former government
minister, if there is anything left in Egypt that is still publicly owned.
He said, in effect, there is almost nothing "and that little will be sold
soon." Sadly he added, "I think that if the government could sell the Nile
itself, the Pyramids, and even my own family, they would do it."

Tragically, in Egypt, social justice is just empty social talk.

(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is national president of the Canadian Islamic
Congress. He can be reached at np@canadianislamiccongress.com)