Egypt’s industrial sector suffers from major problems related to non-compliance with occupational safety and health standards and the deterioration of work environments, exposing workers to health risks and repeated accidents.
The latest of these accidents was the death of three workers at a spinning and weaving factory in Mahalla El-Kubra, as a result of the boilers exploding.
In the wake of this incident, the “Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services” (CTUWS) called on all bodies responsible for occupational safety and health to review the procedures for inspecting industrial facilities and to activate them strictly, and to hold accountable those responsible for the negligence and laxity that led to hundreds of injuries and deaths in the recent period.
Against the backdrop of the incident, MP Evelyn Matta Boutros, a member of the Industry Committee of the House of Representatives, submitted a briefing request addressed to the Minister of Public Business Sector, the chairman of the Holding Company for Spinning and Weaving and the factory’s executive director, regarding the negligence in monitoring the boilers at the Mahalla El-Kubra spinning and weaving factory, which caused the deaths of three workers, one after the other. She demanded that the briefing request be referred to the Industry Committee of the House of Representatives jointly with the House of Representatives’ Human Rights Committee, in order to take the necessary action on it.
MP Abdel Moneim Imam had also submitted, on 27 February, a parliamentary question and a briefing request to the Minister of Public Business Sector about the accident, demanding clarification of the technical and administrative causes that led to the accident, and of the measures the ministry had taken to ensure it would not be repeated.
The MP demanded that the government submit a comprehensive briefing on the following” First: the preliminary findings of the investigation into the causes of the accident, and identifying the body responsible for supervising maintenance and reviewing the equipment at the power station. Second: the action plans and corrective measures taken to address the technical and administrative violations, with a clarification of the immediate measures to ensure that such accidents are not repeated. Third: setting a clear timetable for reassessing and upgrading all critical equipment inside the station, and ensuring its conformity with international safety standards.”
The member of the House of Representatives also demanded that those responsible for any shortcoming or negligence that led to the accident be held accountable, and that legal action be taken against the bodies or individuals involved in non-compliance with technical standards, stressing that this painful accident requires a serious pause to protect the lives of workers and guarantee their safety inside industrial facilities, and emphasising that occupational safety is not something that can be taken lightly under any circumstances.
The Labour Law
The Egyptian Labour Law No. 12 of 2003, which remains in force until now, stipulates the need to provide occupational safety and health in work environments, in 32 articles of the law starting from Article 224. The law obliges companies and factories to apply specific standards to guarantee workers’ safety, such as providing personal protective equipment, conducting periodic medical examinations, and ensuring that the work environment is free of health and environmental hazards. The Occupational Safety and Health Authority is also granted powers to inspect factories and verify their compliance with the laws.
Commenting on this, labour affairs researcher Hassan El-Barbary says: “Occupational safety and health standards are extensively stipulated in Egyptian law, but the problem lies in their application. At the first level, the shortcoming manifests itself in the absence of periodic inspection by the bodies responsible for monitoring the safety of companies and factories. When inspection does take place, it is often formal rather than actual, which constitutes a failure by the Ministry of Labour in overseeing the application of occupational safety and health procedures. Although the Ministry of Labour justifies this by a shortage in the number of inspectors, and a partnership was concluded between Egypt and the International Labour Organization to develop the inspection system, the results on the ground remain unsatisfactory.”
El-Barbary adds, speaking to Zawia3, that as for companies and factories, many of them view workers as cheap human resources, and they are exploited in the most abhorrent ways. The concept of occupational safety and health, with its classic or updated standards, is almost absent, especially in light of environmental changes such as rising temperatures and the climate impacts discussed at the most recent International Labour Conference. The modern occupational safety standards adopted by the International Labour Organization have not yet reached Egypt, which shows a major failure by the Ministry of Labour to adopt these standards.
Article 7 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stipulates that States Parties must provide working conditions that ensure safety and health, and the same Covenant also stipulates, in Article 12, the need to improve all aspects of environmental and industrial health.
According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), the total number of work injury cases reached 8,317 in 2023. The number of work injury cases in the government sector reached 1,404, in the public sector/public business sector 2,463 cases, in the private sector (50 workers or more) 4,327 cases, and in the investment sector 123 cases, at a rate of 1.5% of the total number of cases.
The role of trade unions in training and qualifying workers
According to the Guide to the Basic Principles of Occupational Safety and Health in the Work Environment, issued by the International Labour Organization in 2016, “The responsibility for achieving and implementing occupational safety and health tasks lies with all parties to production. Governments must lay down legislation and enact the laws and regulations that ensure the monitoring of the implementation of occupational safety and health requirements through occupational safety and health inspectors.
As for employers, they bear the responsibility for implementing occupational safety conditions and applying them practically and effectively. They must also provide workers exposed to occupational hazards with appropriate means of protection to prevent occupational diseases and work injuries, in addition to providing general means of protection such as ventilation and lighting, and ensuring a suitable work climate and an appropriate social and humane environment. As for trade unions and workers’ representatives, their responsibility includes guidance and awareness-raising in the field of occupational safety and health, and participation in occupational safety committees inside establishments.
For her part, economic and social rights researcher Mona Ezzat says: “Occupational safety and health does not receive the same degree of attention in all factories and companies, as this varies according to the factory’s activity. For example, factories that produce foodstuffs pay greater attention to occupational safety and health than factories that produce other products. That is because any defect or non-compliance with occupational safety standards in food factories directly affects the quality of the product.
Ezzat adds, speaking to Zawia3, that in the other factories that do not produce foodstuffs, attention to occupational safety is often lower, despite the need for regular follow-up and for periodic maintenance at close intervals. For example, in the cement industries, which are among the most heavily polluting industries, occupational safety and health procedures are costly. In this case, the harm falls more on the workers than on the product, as emissions, fumes and dust affect the workers’ health to a greater degree. Therefore, we find that factories that do not export their products abroad may neglect occupational safety and health procedures, leading to increased rates of occupational diseases.
There is also another problem related to old factories that have not updated their equipment or machinery, and these factories are often on their way to privatisation and sale. In such cases, there is insufficient interest in developing the factory or in maintaining the safety of workers, which leads to higher accident rates, Ezzat says.
The economic and social rights researcher points out that workers themselves sometimes accept harsh working conditions in order to keep their jobs, especially in light of a culture of reliance on customs and traditions wrapped in certain religious beliefs that stress that God is the protector. This mixture of harsh conditions and the inability to speak out or object to working conditions makes workers avoid demanding their rights to occupational safety and health. Workers’ protests usually revolve around wages and bonuses, not occupational safety.
Ezzat believes that the role of trade unions in promoting awareness of the importance of occupational safety and health is absent when it comes to educating and training workers on the importance of maintaining their safety and health in workplaces.
Mental health
The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights addressed the psychological dimension missing from occupational safety and health in a policy paper titled “The Psychological and Mental Health of the Worker: The Right Wasted from Occupational Health and Safety Standards”. The paper highlighted the paramount importance of the worker’s mental health in the work environment, which is often ignored in legislation and policies.
The paper, prepared by labour researcher Hassan El-Barbary, pointed out that the psychological pressures to which the worker is exposed as a result of economic and social working conditions may lead to serious psychological disorders, which negatively affects all elements of the production process.
The paper highlights the shortcomings of current Egyptian legislation, including Labour Law No. 12 of 2003, which focuses on physical health without paying attention to mental health. Although there are about 32 articles related to occupational health and safety, attention to mental health is almost non-existent.
Speaking to Zawia3, labour affairs researcher Hassan El-Barbary says: “There is no attention worth mentioning to the psychological dimension in occupational safety and health. Egyptian laws, whether the Labour Law, the Social Insurance Law or the Health Insurance Law, have not paid any attention to the psychological side of workers. As a result, cases of suicide have appeared among workers because of severe psychological pressure, in the absence of appropriate psychological or health support.”
He explains that some workers resort to taking medications (sometimes unlicensed ones) in order to be able to continue performing their work under great pressure, noting that the work injuries stipulated in the social insurance laws do not include mental illnesses.
El-Barbary adds that although the state established the Supreme Advisory Council for Occupational Safety and Health and announced a national strategy in this field, these entities have had no tangible impact on workers’ lives, as the state’s handling of workers’ mental health is still negative: instead of caring for them and treating them, it has focused on the punitive side, in line with what was established by Law 73 of 2021 on drug testing, which led to the dismissal of a large number of workers. He points out that this law dealt with workers’ psychological problems from the perspective of punishment rather than treatment, which contributed to an increase in psychological and mental illnesses among workers.
The labour affairs researcher believes that dismissing workers under the drug use law led to a large number of them losing their jobs, which greatly and negatively affected their families, and these workers became stigmatised with the charge of drug use, which deprived them of new job opportunities and of putting their expertise to use in the labour market. He notes that the absence of psychological and mental health standards for workers is a fundamental problem not only in Egypt but in the Arab region as a whole.
El-Barbary explains that during the past year he tried to collect data on the psychological effects that workers suffer from, but the scarcity of available data and the difficulty of counting mental illnesses that are not included among recognised work injuries made the matter difficult.
The crisis lies in weak law enforcement
During the past year, a number of accidents befell workers, whether inside or outside their workplaces, as a result of the failure to apply occupational safety and health standards. On 25 February 2024, a tragic accident resulted in the drowning of 10 workers and the injury of 5 others, who were on their way to work in the morning at the Nahdet Misr project at the Al-Dabaiya water station of the New Delta project, and had boarded a wooden ferry on the eastern bank of the Nile River in the Ezbet Rabie area of Nekla village, north of Giza.
On 21 May 2024, an accident occurred that resulted in the deaths of 16 girls, after they fell from a car ferry crossing between the two banks of the Rayah El-Beheiry canal in the Abu Ghaleb area of Monshaat El-Qanater. The girls were on their way, together with others, to their workplace at a fruit export site when the accident occurred. On 19 December 2024, the village of Al-Mai in Shebin El-Kom district, Menoufia Governorate, witnessed the deaths of 4 workers and the injury of two in a sewage well. The investigation revealed that when one of the workers went down into the well to clean it, he suffered severe asphyxiation, and 5 of his colleagues went down one after another, but they were all asphyxiated and four of them breathed their last as a result of inhaling the toxic gases inside the well.
A responsible source at the Sanitation Project Company in Menoufia also suggested that one of the workers went down into the sewage well at the Al-Mai village station and was late in coming out, which prompted 5 of his colleagues to go down one after another to search for him, but they were asphyxiated by the gases inside the well, resulting in the deaths of 4 and the injury of 2 others. Kamal Abbas, general coordinator of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, comments on these accidents, saying: “In the previous reports issued by the CTUWS, whether in statements or in the periodic reports on the state of trade union freedoms and of workers in Egypt, we monitored two types of accidents to which workers are exposed: external and internal.”
Abbas continues, speaking to Zawia3, that external accidents include bus accidents, such as the accident of the Matariya-Port Said buses, which claimed the lives of about 14 male and female workers. He stresses that the problem in these accidents is that the roads and buses are not adequately equipped. In addition, there are the ferry accidents that recur annually, and the ferries are often intended for transporting goods and animals but are used to transport workers, especially informal labour such as children and girls who are under working age. He points out that these accidents reflect a bigger crisis, as the Egyptian government is willing to spend millions on building bridges, while no attention is paid to developing ferries and making them safer.
As for the internal accidents that occur in factories, Abbas believes that they include fires, explosions, gas leaks, production machinery accidents and other accidents. He also believes that the problem in Egypt is not the absence of laws, as there is a law and an authority specialised in occupational safety and health, but that the problem lies in the failure to apply these laws. There are companies and factories that do not provide occupational safety and health equipment, and others that provide it, but workers sometimes do not commit to using it.
The general coordinator of the CTUWS stresses that the crisis is twofold: on the one hand, there is a failure by factory and company managements to apply occupational safety and health standards, and on the other hand, workers themselves sometimes do not commit to wearing protective equipment. He points out that the law stipulates periodic examinations for workers, but it is not sufficiently binding. And although the Labour Law stipulated guaranteeing occupational safety and health, there is weakness in enforcing this law.
Abbas explains that there is another problem related to what are known as “under-the-stairs” factories, or unlicensed factories within the informal sector, because this sector is not sufficiently monitored, and we do not hear about the crises that occur inside it except when a major accident occurs that leads to loss of life. He stresses that there is an urgent need to pay attention to occupational safety and health, especially in confronting the environmental pollution caused by these factories, which affects workers and residents. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment remains absent from intervening in these vital issues.
A report issued by the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services titled “Workers in the Whirlpool of Crisis.. A Report on Violations of Trade Union Freedoms for 2024” stressed that reality has clearly shown that there is flagrant negligence by the concerned authorities in ensuring security and safety at work. In many cases, workers are forced to work in unhealthy or unsuitable environmental conditions, which exposes them to serious health risks, and some of them even begin to take risks in travelling on unsafe roads, which multiplies their suffering and endangers their lives.
The report explained that, despite labour laws that aim to provide a safe environment for workers, these laws remain ink on paper in the absence of effective and continuous oversight. The inevitable result of this is that workers remain vulnerable to health and occupational disasters, and some of them are deprived of the safety they deserve, not only in their workplaces but even on the roads they take.
Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that the sewage well accident in Menoufia occurred on 20 December 2024 in Tala district and resulted in the deaths of 6 workers; the correct information is that it occurred on 19 December 2024 at the pumping station of Al-Mai village, which belongs to Shebin El-Kom district, and resulted in the deaths of 4 workers and the injury of two, according to what was published by Akhbar El-Yom Gate and Al-Ahram Gate.
