The chairman of the Independent Trade Union Committee on Education in Qena governorate, Atef Mahmoud, was surprised by his summons by the judiciary on charges of 'founding a trade union without authorization' and following a complaint to his against the director of the regional labor office of the Najaâ Hamadi city.
Following this convocation, the Independent Trade Union Committee for Education in Qena governorate affirmed that its legal status is certified and called for the cessation of such practices. The Commission has stated that it intends to pursue the defense of the interests of its members irrespective of the sacrifices that this entails, while recalling that the Egyptian Constitution guarantees workers the right to form, freely, trade union organizations and that the Government, through its the Ministry of Labor is violating the law it has issued.
In addition, the Commission explained that the complaint against its president came after a first summons issued last August to the public prosecutor's office where Atef Mahmoud was released after his lawyer was informed of the case. The documents in the case, number 9168, note that Atef Mahmoud did not obtain any authorization from the Ministry of Labor to create the trade union and that he only has a receipt for filing foundation whereas the law on trade union organizations, in its article 10, provides that 'the foundation of trade union organizations, on a democratic basis, is a constitutional right obtained from the date of filing of the necessary documents with the specialized administrative party.
Article 18 of the same law provides that 'the constituent assembly of the trade union organization elects the administrative council which in turn elects the bureau of the organization and distributes the tasks to the members of the administrative council over the 15 days following the election of the constituent public meeting of the council, which was done by the president of the concerned Commission.
Furthermore, Article 19, which gives the administrative party the right to object, provides that 'if the specialized administrative party is within the first 30 days after the filing of the required documents, that the procedures and / or the documents are missing, it is required to inform the legal representative of the organization via a written note accompanied by an acknowledgment of receipt. This article was not respected in the case of Atef Mahmoud.
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