Water workers raise their voices, but is the state listening?
Sharif Hamdi(*), a meter inspector at the Cairo Water and Wastewater Company, walks more than six kilometers a day between his home and the El-Marg metro station in northeast Cairo to save 15 Egyptian pounds (about $0.30) in transport fares.
Hamdi lives in Berket Al-Hajj, more than three kilometers from the station. He takes the train to Heliopolis, where he has worked at the water company for 15 years. Yet after all these years of service, his net salary does not exceed 5,800 pounds a month (about $120).
Transport fares are just one basic expense he has crossed off the family budget. Red meat is another. The family of six; father, mother, and four daughters, three of them in different stages of education- has replaced it with a single chicken or half a kilo of breaded chicken fillet each week.
They have also cut their consumption of eggs and milk by about two-thirds. Fruit has almost disappeared from the table, while the mother steps up her efforts to find low-cost meals—something that rarely works amid soaring prices and raging inflation.
Not far from Hamdi, his colleague Said Abdallah(*), who also works for the company, goes without food during the workday and waits until he gets home at 6 pm. His monthly food allowance from the company is no more than 100 pounds (about $2).
“A sandwich costs 10 pounds. To have breakfast I need 30 pounds a day,” he said.
Most of the workers at the Cairo water company who spoke to Al Manassa had stories like Hamdi and Abdallah. The economic situation has pushed them into a state of deprivation that deepens every day.
Under the weight of these conditions, workers rose up in a powerful wave of protests at dozens of sites in Cairo. The movement spread to the governorates of Giza, Sharqiya, Beni Suef, and Minya, among others.
These protests marked a new chapter in industrial action across multiple sectors, with similar demands centered on implementing the minimum wage, adjusting salaries, and paying arrears and bonuses to cope with the sharp rise in prices, especially for food and transport.
Sacking those behind the poverty gap
In the protests that began on Nov. 12 and continued until they were suspended on Nov. 24, workers raised a long list of demands. At the top were adding delayed bonuses dating back to 2016, paying tax refunds, raising allowances, and granting permanent contracts to temporary workers.
Alaa Ahmed(*), who has worked at the company for 20 years, said he earns 7,000 pounds—the current minimum wage, about $145. The overdue bonuses would push his salary and those of his colleagues to around 11,000 pounds a month (about $230), he added.
“That’s why we see this as the most important demand,” he said, noting that management has tried to discourage workers from it at any cost.
“They told us, ‘If you want the bonuses, go to court.’ Then they said they would form a committee to study the issue. It’s all promises we know will never be implemented. Why should I file a lawsuit and spend years in the courts when my right is obvious?” he told Al Manassa.
Securing permanent contracts for temporary workers is another core demand. Temporary contracts reduce financial entitlements and leave workers under constant threat of dismissal.
“For the smallest reason a person can find themselves on the street. We are demanding our right to permanent contracts so we can feel secure,” said Ali Khalil(*), a bill collector in Helwan.
Workers’ demands are not limited to economic rights or job security. They also include calls to dismiss company advisers, who they say “receive salaries that can reach hundreds of thousands of pounds a month,” and to dismiss senior officials at the company, headed by the deputy chair for financial and administrative affairs, Ali Amasha, whom they accuse of blocking their demands.
During their demonstrations, workers called on the Administrative Control Authority to intervene, chanting, “Administrative Control, our company is full of thieves,” and “Raise your voice and don’t be afraid, the thieves have to go.”
Al Manassa attempted to contact the chair of the Cairo Drinking Water and Sanitation Company, Mostafa El-Shimi, by phone and via WhatsApp to ask about the workers’ demands and give him a chance to respond to their accusations of corruption against some company officials. He had not responded by the time of publication.
Absent union, angry workers
The absence of the company’s workplace union committee and the General Union of Public Utilities Workers did not derail the protests, which were marked by a high level of organization and spread across dozens of sites.
Adel Hussein(*), one of the organizers, praised the maturity workers showed, which he said signals the rise of a new generation of leaders who genuinely represent the workforce instead of union members he described as “failing them.”
But the chair of the company’s workplace union committee, Hamdi El-Saadawi, rejects that description. He denied accusations that the union sided with management and told Al Manassa that committee members were present with the workers from the first day of the protests while also negotiating with company management and the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Wastewater to implement the demands.
“The biggest proof is that I was standing next to the workers while they read out the statement announcing that they would suspend the protests,” he said.
El-Saadawi said many of the workers’ demands had been met, especially those of bill collectors, “whose incentive rewards for collection were increased. The practice of counting the collection incentive as part of the minimum wage was abolished, as was the fingerprint system.”
He argued that “some demands are not in the hands of the company chair, such as adding the delayed bonuses, adjusting pay to reflect qualifications, and granting permanent contracts. Those are in the hands of the minister.”
Where is the labor ministry?
The Ministry of Labor was also absent. It issued no statements about the protests and made no visible effort to negotiate, despite recent ministry statements regarding its officials’ work to apply provisions of the new labor law through inspection campaigns to ensure compliance with the minimum wage.
At the beginning of the crisis, several company workers tried to file complaints at labor offices in Cairo, but staff there refused to accept them, workers told Al Manassa.
Labor researcher Hassan Barbari believes the ministry wants to distance itself from disputes arising from workers’ protests at government-run facilities, especially public utilities, so it does not embarrass the government.
Workers at the drinking water and sanitation companies fall under Law 14 of 2025. Barbari believes that regulations governing public utilities companies need to be amended to bring them into line with the new labor law.
The labor researcher told Al Manassa there are currently two wage systems: one under the Civil Service Law and another governed by the definitions of the labor law. This has created a gap between the pay of state employees and workers at affiliated utilities, in clear violation of the constitution.
What the workers’ chants reveal
The labor ministry’s disregard for the crisis and the union’s absence left clear marks on the workers’ chants. They ranged from direct expressions of core demands to outright rejection of management’s responses.
One slogan captured this clearly: “Bonuses without lawsuits, I am not hiring a lawyer,” a quick retort to a call by the acting chair of the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ahmed Gaber, for workers to file lawsuits if they wanted to receive the delayed bonuses.
Workers also addressed President El-Sisi directly in chants such as, “Mr. President, take up our case,” knowing that many issues are not resolved without direct intervention from the president.
“The president has everything in his hands, and the biggest proof is the rerun elections after his instructions,” said Ashraf Ezzat(*), one of the protest leaders.
The chants also targeted the housing minister, confronting him with the reality of their low salaries: “Housing minister, come and see how little we make.” In an effort to neutralize the police, workers repeatedly chanted, “Interior minister, this protest is peaceful.”
Protesters also revived slogans with a political opposition tone and adapted them to their situation. These included “It’s a play, it’s a play, the gang is still the same,” “Change, change,” “We are not afraid and we won’t bow down, we are sick of quiet voices,” “Our demands are the same as ever, we live in a state, not a fiefdom,” and “One, two, where is the media?”
Attempts to contain the unrest
From the beginning, the government struggled to calm workers’ anger. They had already learned that promises made today quickly evaporate tomorrow.
The visit by acting chair of the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ahmed Gaber, to protesters in Zeitoun and Amiriya the day after demonstrations broke out, and his pledge to issue decisions that would meet their demands, did not stop them from escalating. They continued their protests, dismissing his promises as “empty words.”
Even after the holding company issued 13 decisions in what it called an incentive package aimed at supporting workers, improving the work environment, and achieving job stability, workers were not persuaded to end their protests.
They said the package lacked real substance, relied on procrastination and delay, and ignored their three main demands: paying the delayed bonuses, granting permanent contracts to temporary workers, and dismissing Amasha.
Management then tried again by paying out the tax refunds for one of the eight years owed to workers. Protesters saw this as a slight to their demands and organized new demonstrations across worksites, chanting, “We will not stop our protests until the bonuses are paid.”
After 12 days of protests, workers decided to suspend their actions “temporarily,” while keeping open the strong possibility of renewed demonstrations if management tried to evade implementing their main demands and settled for what one worker called “throwing them scraps.”
Hamdi recently lost one of the tools he had used to cover the large shortfall in his monthly expenses: a credit card he used for purchases.
A debt of 50,000 pounds (about $1,000) on the card rendered it useless. He returned to borrowing from relatives and friends. Taking advances has become a constant process that begins on the tenth day of each month and continues until his next salary is paid.
When he gets his pay, he uses some of it to pay back part of his debts, then repeats the cycle the following month.
The meter inspector is waiting to see whether the protests he joined with his colleagues will bear fruit, so he can at least get some relief from constant worry about how to make it to the end of the month and who to approach next for a loan.
(*) Name changed at the request of the source, fearing for their safety