The village of “El Manawat,” one of the villages affiliated with the Abu Nomros Center in Giza Governorate (located in the south of the governorate, 90 kilometers from the capital Cairo), has witnessed a significant boom in the scrap trade for years. In one of its alleys, no wider than three meters, houses are randomly aligned, with each house’s ground floor being used as a scrap storage. The homeowners decided to utilize their homes for the scrap trade, which they started engaging in years ago.
In a simple house in the village, Mahmoud Adel, a young man in his twenties, lies on a bed in a small room characterized by its simple belongings that reflect its residents. The young man continues his treatment journey after a tragic accident caused by the explosion of a device while working in a scrap store, resulting in the amputation of his right leg and part of his other foot, as well as losing several fingers on his hands.
A few months ago, Mahmoud started his work early, sorting items in the store with his cousin Ali. Mahmoud says: “We sort the items and scrap that the store owner acquires either through factory waste auctions or from roving scrap workers who collect from homes. We sort these items based on their type and material.”
Mahmoud describes his work, which he shared with his mentioned cousin. He says: “We separate metallic items, whether old engines or broken electrical devices, disassembling their components using primitive manual tools. We often suffered various injuries, sometimes severe cuts,” confirming that scrap stores or sales points in Egypt lack safety measures and do not follow necessary safety procedures.
He continues: “On the day of the accident, we were doing our usual daily work when I encountered a strange object among the scrap we were sorting. My cousin advised me to leave it until the store owner returned, but I didn’t heed his advice and struck it, causing a powerful explosion. I lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital, unable to feel my limbs.”
Based on field visits conducted by Zawia3 in El Manawat village from January to May this year, where the investigator visited more than ten scrap stores with an average workforce of four workers per store, we document in this investigation the violations and injuries suffered by workers in this trade, trying to estimate its size and legality. The village’s population exceeds 200,000 according to the latest official census mentioning the village in 2006, while the current population is nearly double based on satellite images and local estimates.
Scrap Stores Operating Illegally
Some scrap stores violate local laws and regulations enacted by the Egyptian legislator. Law No. 154 of 2019 on public shops stipulates a set of conditions for operating and licensing commercial activities in general, including conditions for licensing scrap shops. These include maintaining workers’ health, providing safety measures, equipping workers with shock-resistant helmets, wearing sturdy gloves designed for this purpose, and conducting regular medical check-ups for those involved in transport, collection, and handling, with semi-annual tests for lead levels in blood, hair, and nails. The law also mandates periodic tests for lead concentrations in soil within the shop’s vicinity and prohibits permanently storing moderately hazardous waste like used tires and old solid batteries on-site, requiring regular disposal.
Similarly, the International Labour Organization’s laws set standards for occupational health and safety, providing a safe and healthy working environment, and reducing work-related accidents and occupational diseases. Workers should also have the right to safety protection.
A relative of Mahmoud, who lives near the store where the young man worked, describes what happened at the time. He says: “We all rushed out upon hearing a loud noise nearby, finding a large fire. After the fire trucks arrived, we hurried into the store, finding Mahmoud lying on the ground in critical condition, unconscious, while Ali lost his life and head in the explosion.”
He continues: “Mahmoud suffered a major accident causing him significant physical and psychological pain, especially since he was planning to marry soon, which will certainly change with his new situation. He also feels guilty for losing his cousin and lifelong friend.”
He confirms that the store owner did not abandon Mahmoud during his treatment journey, providing him with financial compensation to start a small project suitable for his new circumstances and also offered financial compensation to the family of the young man who died in the explosion.
According to the Global Network for Economic and Social Rights, workers must have safe and healthy working conditions that do not compromise human dignity. Reasonable working hours, rest, leisure, and paid periodic holidays must also be ensured.
Eye Injuries Most Common Among Scrap Workers
In an indicative sample of 50 workers involved in collecting, sorting, and processing scrap, interviewed by Zawia3, many confirmed suffering various degrees of injuries depending on the risk level of their work. Apart from those with partial or complete disabilities, some suffered less severe injuries.
Hassan Mohamed (a pseudonym, 20 years old), who has been working in a scrap store for over seven years, shares the same working conditions as Mahmoud, where basic safety measures or first aid for injured workers are absent.
He says: “I started my work in sorting, which involved distributing the goods arriving at the stores by type. After gaining more experience, I began processing, earning a daily wage not exceeding 400 EGP for a skilled worker, despite the dangers of the job. I believed that as long as we were careful, we were safe from injuries, until I had an accident where I lost my left eye.”
He describes the accident: “Since I started processing scrap, I had minor cuts on different parts of my body. One day, while processing motors extracted from electrical appliances, something hit my left eye forcefully, causing severe bleeding, and I lost my sight.”
Despite his accident, Hassan continued working in scrap processing, unable to change his job after accumulating extensive experience and with his eye injury reducing his chances of getting other jobs.
Abdelrahman Rashid, 22 years old, shares Hassan’s eye injury, with a disability rate of 6%. He started this work four years ago after being a construction worker, forced by deteriorating conditions due to the COVID-19 outbreak to switch jobs and work in scrap stores. According to him, the pandemic led millions to stop working, and some professions like construction were halted due to government decisions to stop issuing building permits and impose many restrictions on new buildings.
In 2020, the Ministry of Local Development announced a six-month suspension on issuing permits for building, expanding, elevating, or modifying private residences, along with halting ongoing construction work in the governorates of Greater Cairo, Alexandria, and provincial capitals and major cities with high population density.
Rashid describes starting his scrap work in 2020 in a store in El Manawat village, explaining how he sorted incoming goods and processed them. After working for nearly six months, his daily wage increased, encouraging him to continue. In his second year, he suffered an eye injury from a scrap item, causing permanent disability. Despite the injury, he continued working in scrap processing due to his urgent need for income.
According to the Global Network for Economic and Social Rights, every individual has the right to work, and authorities must take appropriate measures to create an environment that promotes productive employment opportunities. States must also ensure non-discrimination in all aspects of work. The first six articles of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights guarantee every individual the right to just and favorable working conditions.
Informal Economy
The scrap trade falls under the informal economy within the industrial sector, including factories/workshops/stores that must comply with the full requirements of registration and licensing for industrial activities. From monitoring the ten visited stores, only one owner had a tax card and commercial register, allowing them to operate legally.
A parliamentary report previously monitored the informal economy’s percentage and the number of companies operating within it. The economic census conducted by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics for 2017-2018 indicated that the informal economy sector accounted for 53% of total establishments in economic activity sectors, with two million establishments operating in the informal sector. The Ministry of Finance announced that the informal economy’s size could reach an average of 55% of the total Egyptian economy.
Socially, the Egyptian Center for Strategic Studies indicated that although this economy provides job opportunities for a large segment of society, absorbing them into the formal economy and providing them with income, it does not offer job security, satisfaction, or inclusion in governmental insurance and pension systems. Moreover, practicing these jobs without oversight threatens the lives of workers and citizens in the geographical area. Previous data indicated that the number of workers in the informal economy reached about four million citizens, representing 29.3% of the total workforce in the formal and informal sectors, estimated at 12.6 million individuals in 2018.
Intensive Security Campaigns
Analyzing data from 55 news articles in the official Al-Ahram newspaper during the first seven months of this year, the investigator found that approximately 18,000 cases were filed against scrap stores through intensive security campaigns, with over 45,000 accused and about five million tons of seized alloys and metals. However, the monitored news did not specify the areas or governorates where these campaigns took place.
Zawia3 visited a scrap store located outside the village’s urban area, where the store owner (who preferred to remain anonymous) took us to the site where goods were collected. It covers about 1,000 meters, with many makeshift stores surrounded by agricultural lands, separated by metal sheets.
The store owner said that scrap work became the main occupation for most village residents, especially after many jobs stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing daily laborers to seek other income sources. This increased the number of scrap stores in the village to over 300, with an average of four workers per store.
He explained that the store owner is responsible for the workers and their treatment in case of injuries, as all these workers are outside insurance coverage and have no professional or labor rights, despite the significant increase in workers in this trade across the country, from roving scrap collectors to store workers and major traders. Moreover, a large number of children are involved in this activity, violating child protection laws, which prohibit child labor under the age of 15.
He denounced the lack of government oversight to protect workers’ lives or provide safety measures, stating that this trade lacks any government organization from the concerned authorities despite its size and increasing workforce. Some store owners have commercial registers and tax cards, while most work illegally, with some dealing in stolen goods, causing many legal and social problems. He explained that utility police constantly target these stores, especially with their legal status unregulated.
Jamal Ali, one of the suppliers of chemical acids used in scrap work, revealed that workers in this trade face significant risks from collection to sorting, using tools and materials that double this risk.
He explained that he supplies “nitric and sulfuric acid” to the stores, used to detect and separate metals, but sometimes causes varying degrees of burns upon skin contact, in addition to high rates of eye injuries and limb losses among workers.
Jamal added that this trade has seen significant growth in villages over the past five years, amid declining job opportunities and the impact of rising prices on various professions. He emphasized that this trade is a hotspot for child labor, with children seeking income to support their families.
Ahmed Ali described his work in scrap sorting: “I work in several stores inside and outside the village, sorting scrap – separating metals in shipments. My day starts at seven or eight in the morning, depending on work pressure, and ends by eight in the evening – about 12 hours daily. My wage depends on the amount of production I sort based on my experience and speed.”
He added that many stores specialize in a single type of work, either sorting or processing, or both, with a contractor responsible for gathering workers for stores outside the village, providing transportation, and sometimes agreeing to provide breakfast and lunch when work duration extends, typically bread and cheese or jam and luncheon for breakfast and lunch.
Ali described his workplace as a large store accommodating over 100 workers, specializing in sorting goods from scrap shipments imported through Ain Sokhna port. He confirmed frequent injuries among scrap workers, especially those in processing, due to repeated incidents of exploding devices and foreign objects in scrap shipments from factory waste.
Beni Suef Villages Enter the Scrap Trade
Scrap work is not limited to El Manawat village; three villages in Beni Suef Governorate in Upper Egypt have turned their villages into major scrap and plastic crusher storage centers and aluminum factories instead of agriculture. The villages of (El Nuweira, Sherhi, and Ezbet Tammam Kassab) are known for buying scrap from collectors, sorting, and classifying it.
We contacted Saeed Ramadan, media director in Beni Suef Governorate, who confirmed that the villages did not change their activity as it contradicts current government directions. A memo (which we obtained) was submitted by the Ihnasia Center director to move these villages to the desert hinterland areas, as having this activity within the urban area is illegal. However, the proposal was halted due to the distance of the designated areas from the active villages and the difficulty of transportation between them.
According to Trend Economy, an international trade database for updated import and export statistics by country and product, Egypt’s imports of “iron and scrap waste” amounted to about 1.53 billion USD in 2022, compared to export values of 4.61 million USD in the same year.
Lack of Information
The government announced a six-month halt on scrap and some metal exports due to many companies’ difficulties in finding scrap and raw materials for some metals and their high local prices. The decision resulted from the scarcity of scrap in the local market, as traders – not registered in the formal economy – collected and exported scrap amid high global metal prices, negatively impacting local factories and companies.
Mohamed El Mohandes, Chairman of the Engineering Industries Chamber at the Federation of Egyptian Industries and Chairman of the Mechanical Factories Company, confirmed in an interview that scrap export was halted based on a decision issued by the Ministry of Trade and Industry in 2022 to address the problems facing metal recycling factories.
He pointed out that the chamber lacks information on the size of the scrap industry in Egypt or the number of traders involved, as many prefer to work covertly and informally. He explained that the official decision to stop scrap exports prevented legal exportation, but did not reduce smuggling, especially with the lack of official data and statistics on this industry and its workers.
The chairman commented on the spread of scrap stores in many villages, saying it is the governorate’s role and its municipalities to monitor local activities to protect workers’ rights and the state’s rights, especially with many evading tax payments. The lack of oversight also facilitates the smuggling of products needed by many Egyptian factories.
The main role of the chamber is to try to provide the scrap needed by factories from local markets instead of exporting it and re-importing it as semi-finished products, attempting to limit imports, promote local manufacturing, and save foreign currency.
According to the Scrap Buyers and Importers Guide, there are 61 active scrap importers in Egypt importing from 98 suppliers. This data was updated until June last year, based on the Volza Guide for Scrap Importers and Buyers in Egypt, obtained from 70 countries, with import-export shipment data, buyers’ and suppliers’ names, and decision-makers’ contact information such as phone numbers, emails, and profiles.
Ayman El Nagouly, head of the Metal Forming Division at the Engineering Industries Chamber, supports the decision to halt scrap metal exports, particularly iron and copper, describing these metals as a national treasure recycled in various industries. He noted that metal prices are directly linked to supply and demand mechanisms imposed by the market from time to time.
El Nagouly disagreed with the previous opinion that the lack of official data on the scrap trade and its workers causes material smuggling or jeopardizes workers’ rights. He explained that scrap traders supplying major companies have all official documents and comply with annual tax payments.
On the rights of workers in this industry and their exposure to significant risks, the head of the Metal Forming Division at the Engineering Industries Chamber said this falls under the responsibilities of regulatory authorities protecting workers’ rights, including the Social Insurance and Pensions Authority, in cooperation with employers, whether traders or store owners.
In the midst of the spreading scrap stores in many villages and towns, with repeated explosion incidents and frequent worker injuries and deaths, safety measures and occupational health standards remain absent. Mahmoud suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after losing his limbs and cousin in a horrific accident, while Hassan and Abdelrahman seek to continue their work independently by purchasing scrap deals for their own accounts, hoping to improve their personal circumstances.
