More than thirteen years after joining Helwan University as a technician on a temporary contract, Maged Sabry is still waiting for the permanent appointment he says was promised repeatedly. Each year brought the same assurance: regularisation would come in the second half of the year.
Now Sabry, whose name has been changed, says he and hundreds of colleagues face a different choice: sign new contracts they believe undermine their rights, or risk losing their pay and their jobs.
Three months ago, workers were asked to sign agreements they describe as unfair. They say they were threatened verbally with dismissal or the suspension of salaries if they refused. Their accounts describe pressure to abandon expectations of permanent employment after years of continuous service.
Sabry says previous arrangements included a continuity provision, under which contracts were renewed as long as workers attended and signed the attendance registers. He attributes the change in approach to instructions issued after Major General Mohamed Abu Shaqqa became the university’s secretary-general.
“The new contracts are fundamentally different,” he tells Zawia3. In his understanding, they would prevent workers from claiming permanent appointment and allow their relationship with the university to be converted into casual or daily work.
“If I sign today, they could dismiss me tomorrow without warning and without any legal obligation towards us.” — Maged Sabry, a pseudonym
That is the worker’s fear about how the arrangement would operate. The written contract examined by Zawia3 includes a notice provision of at least one month for specified termination cases, and its permanent-appointment clause refers to applicable regulations and laws. The distinction between the text and the verbal threats workers report is central to their dispute.
Sabry puts the number affected at more than 280, working across the university’s faculties and departments as technicians, accountants, student-affairs staff, manual workers and drivers. He says monthly pay ranges from EGP 4,000 to EGP 5,000 and comes from the university’s special funds.
According to him, workers were given until 1 July to sign. After that, they were told, salaries would stop, they would have to return items entrusted to them for work, and they would no longer be allowed to sign attendance records. He says no written circular had been issued confirming those measures.
Sabry also says management offered salary increases, bonuses and application of the new minimum wage as incentives to sign. Roughly twenty colleagues did so, he says, before seeking legal assistance to challenge their signatures. He further alleges that some employees recruited after his group obtained permanent appointments in 2017 because of family connections to Higher Education Ministry officials. That allegation is his account, rather than a finding established by this report.
Mona Ahmed, also a pseudonym, joined the university on a temporary contract in 2013. She says the new arrangements would deprive her and colleagues of permanent appointment, bonuses and health and social insurance. “They threatened us that 30 June would be the final deadline, after which salaries would stop and we would be prevented from signing in,” she says.
Other colleagues joined in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Ahmed says that from 2019 the university provided annual documents headed “continuity of contracting” instead of the contracts they had previously received, continuing that practice until 2024.
“This year, we were told the new contracts would secure our future,” she says. “In reality, they strip away our rights.” She and colleagues have turned to the courts, arguing that the proposed changes threaten their leave, insurance, bonuses and prospects of regularisation.
What the new contract says
Zawia3 examined a copy of the agreement workers were being asked to sign. The university, represented by its president or an authorised representative, is the first party; the contracted worker is the second.
The agreement requires the worker to carry out assigned duties consistent with the nature of the work and report on progress. It sets a fixed term and says renewal is not automatic: another term requires the university’s express agreement.
Payment is described as an all-inclusive contractual remuneration, encompassing the amounts due for the assigned work and subject to applicable taxes. The worker must perform duties accurately and honestly, devote working hours to those duties, refuse gifts or commissions, and bear responsibility for errors.
The sixth clause says the contract does not itself give the worker a right to demand permanent appointment outside the rules and legislation governing the Central Agency for Organisation and Administration (CAOA) and the Finance Ministry. It also requires compliance with laws, regulations and the administrative unit’s internal rules.
Disciplinary measures include a warning, deductions from the all-inclusive payment of up to ten days at a time or thirty days in a year, a fifteen-day deduction accompanied by a warning of termination, and termination itself.
The termination clause lists several grounds: a worker’s request approved by the competent authority; absence for five consecutive or ten separate days without an acceptable excuse; misconduct affecting the dignity of public service; or the end of the need for the contract. It provides for notification at least one month before termination and states that ending the contract does not remove disciplinary or legal liability.
The agreement refers to Civil Service Law No. 81 of 2016 and the jurisdiction of the competent Egyptian courts. Its final clause provides for a copy to be kept in the employee’s file and for the contractual period to count as an extension of the earlier period dating from the first contract.
These provisions do not resolve the workers’ concerns about what benefits they will receive in practice. Nor do their accounts, by themselves, establish that every feared consequence is expressly written into the document.
Fear of losing cancer treatment
Sanaa Mohamed, a temporary employee whose name has also been changed, has breast cancer. Unable to afford treatment herself, she receives monthly care through state-funded treatment and health insurance. Since February, she says, pressure to sign the new contract has included threats that her treatment could be cut off.
Mohamed first worked at the university in 2011, left for personal reasons, and returned in January 2015. She says the new arrangement does not guarantee insurance coverage and limits annual leave to fifteen days, with deductions for additional absences. Those concerns led her to refuse to sign.
“Since February, we have faced continuous pressure to sign the new contracts or leave work at the beginning of July,” she tells Zawia3. She says verbal threats were relayed through the human resources director or the secretary-general: workers would be prevented from signing in and would lose salaries, insurance and other entitlements.
“We will not even receive a dismissal letter,” she says. “We will effectively be dismissed after more than ten years of work, without any official document.” Her account concerns a threatened interruption to care; it does not establish that cancer treatment had already been stopped.
Taking the dispute to court
Rania Attia has brought proceedings before the Administrative Court challenging the university’s refusal to appoint her permanently. She argues that she meets the conditions under Article 73 of Civil Service Law No. 81 of 2016 and Article 187 of its implementing regulations.
Attia says she has worked under continuous formal contracts since 2013 and that payment and insurance records establish the employment relationship. She regards the refusal to regularise her position as unlawful and an abuse of administrative authority.
She says she was ordered to hand over work items without a written, officially stamped administrative decision identifying the issuing authority, the person responsible for those items, and what was to be returned. She also alleges threats to stop her July salary and bar her from the workplace and attendance registers unless she signed the new agreement.
Her claim remains a legal challenge, not a court ruling establishing that the university has violated the law. Whether each worker qualifies for permanent appointment depends on the relevant conditions and evidence in their individual file.
Article 73 provides a route to appointment at the lowest permanent grade for qualifying temporary workers, including requirements concerning the date of contracting, the post’s budgetary status, and at least three years after transfer to the seasonal-wages item under Chapter One of the budget. It should not be reduced to an automatic right arising after any three years of employment.
Article 187 of the implementing regulations issued by Decree No. 1216 of 2017 details the process. It includes CAOA and Finance Ministry review, a vacant and funded post, the qualifications required for that post, copies of contracts from the beginning of employment, and payment records certified by the unit’s financial controller. It also addresses transfers into the seasonal-wages budget item for contracts within the specified 2012–2016 period.
In January 2022, CAOA head Saleh El-Sheikh described the agency’s review of regularisation applications under Article 73. The process involves checking qualifications, job descriptions, required approvals, national identification details against employment and wage records, continued service and retirement status. The point is that the budget classification and supporting documents matter alongside length of service.
A State Council opinion cited in the reporting similarly emphasised compliance with the statutory conditions, including a funded vacancy and certified contractual and payment records. The workers’ argument is that their long service and documentation should be examined under those rules rather than displaced by a new precarious arrangement.
“Humiliating rules”
Malek Adly, a human rights lawyer and director of the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights, sees the dispute as part of a broader pattern in state institutions. Temporary employees, he says, are vulnerable because they need the work and hope that public-sector employment will eventually provide security.
He criticises salaries below the government’s own minimum wage, inadequate insurance and leave, and the constant threat of dismissal. In his assessment, the arrangements are inconsistent with workers’ legal and constitutional rights.
“These are humiliating rules. When these are the contracts of the state, of state-owned institutions, of institutions we finance through our taxes, what should we expect private-sector contracts to look like?” — Malek Adly
Adly says an employment contract must comply with the applicable law and safeguard entitlements, whether governed by civil-service rules or labour legislation. The distinction between fixed-term and indefinite contracts cannot, in his view, justify depriving people of basic protections.
He believes some public bodies use such arrangements because they lack adequate budgets for fair wages and benefits. That undermines the very reasons people seek government work: security, a decent wage floor, and social and health insurance.
Adly describes the resulting exploitation in severe terms, likening it to coercive labour practices. That is his characterisation of the employment relationship, not a judicial finding that a trafficking offence has occurred. Poverty, he says, drives people to accept almost any job, leaving them exposed when clear limits on public employers are absent or unenforced.
He urges affected employees to submit complaints to the Cabinet, MPs, the presidency, the Higher Education Ministry and the Supreme Council of Universities, all of which have responsibilities connected to the institution.
Labour and human rights lawyer Haitham Mohamedein also argues that the workers’ position must be assessed within the framework governing public employment, rather than treated as casual private-sector labour. He believes workers who meet the statutory conditions should have their status regularised.
He warns that retaining experienced employees on temporary remuneration arrangements can prevent seniority from translating into promotion, increments and accumulated pay. It also makes workers feel easier to dismiss and deprives them of a predictable employment future.
“It is a major tragedy for the state to adopt practices resembling those of the private sector and treat groups of employees as temporary workers in order to deprive them of seniority and length of service.” — Haitham Mohamedein
The concern, he says, is twofold: an absence of job security and an inability to build earnings and benefits over time.
Which legal protections apply?
Labour researcher Hassan Barbary, secretary of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party’s workers’ bureau, says temporary workers face especially harsh conditions when the state itself is the employer. Public institutions should set an example in respecting rights and social justice, he argues.
Barbary identifies insecurity, inadequate health and social insurance, uncertain pension rights and difficulty accessing sick leave as central concerns. He believes workers who satisfy the conditions for permanent appointment should not be kept indefinitely in a precarious position.
For the employee with cancer, he says, uncertainty about coverage is an immediate threat to protection when illness makes it most necessary. He also criticises unequal treatment between temporary and permanent workers who perform continuing tasks for the same institution.
The legal provisions need to be identified accurately. Article 1 of the Civil Service Law addresses merit and non-discrimination; Article 4 concerns human resources committees; Article 9 deals with organisational structures and job schedules; and Article 14 sets eligibility requirements for appointment. Article 73 of the law and Article 187 of the regulations contain the relevant temporary-worker regularisation rules.
Article 119 of the regulations concerns the remuneration of a seconded employee. It is not a general provision requiring insurance for every temporary worker. Correcting these references does not determine the merits of the workers’ claims, which require examination of their contracts, funding arrangements and applicable insurance rules.
Public employment without security
Former manpower minister and veteran labour leader Kamal Abu Eita places the university dispute within a wider deterioration in employment relationships. He says growing informality leaves large numbers of workers outside effective social protection and employment security.
He describes workers without proper contracts, adequate pay or safeguards as facing profoundly unequal relationships. In his view, those conditions erode rights won through generations of labour organising and political struggle.
“It is saddening to see workers’ rights taken away in a country with Egypt’s history, and after the rights workers gained through their struggle,” he tells Zawia3. He recalls workers’ role in the country’s recent uprisings and the social ambitions that accompanied them, as well as protections associated with the July 1952 revolution.
Abu Eita also criticises recent legislation, arguing that it fails to remedy old shortcomings and diminishes established rights. He says restrictions on independent trade union organisation weaken a potential source of collective protection for both regular and irregular workers.
Against rising living costs, more than two hundred temporary employees at Helwan University face uncertainty about jobs many have held for a decade or longer. Their testimonies describe pressure to sign, threatened loss of income, and fears over treatment, insurance and professional dignity.
The contract’s wording, the verbal instructions alleged by workers and the statutory requirements for permanent appointment are separate strands of the dispute. Taken together, they raise urgent questions about whether a public institution is providing a lawful path to secure employment or using its workers’ dependence on their wages to impose greater insecurity.
The workers and labour advocates interviewed are asking the state to examine their files and protect the rights of those who have served it for years. Their demand is for a clear, accountable decision—not an unwritten threat at the end of another temporary contract.
