The Universities of Alexandria, Damietta, Tanta, Assiut and Mansoura started the first day of the new school year Saturday with a series of protests, sit-ins and strikes staged by both workers and students.
Hundreds of employees at the University of Alexandria went on strike on Saturday and demonstrated in front of the university administration building to protest the Cabinet’s failure to meet their demands regarding the university’s financial situation.
Disrupting traffic on the Corniche road, protesters held banners bearing their demands, which they described as “legitimate” and chanted “strike is legitimate against injustice and against hunger.”
The new University of Damietta has started its first day with a strike by administration officials, in protest against President Mohamed Morsy’s decision to only give education quality bonuses to professors and not the rest of the university’s workers.
Tanta University also saw hundreds of administrative workers and university hospital workers storming the management building and demanding the dismissal of the university head for not responding to their demands.
Additionallly, a large number of workers at Assiut University started an in office strike in various colleges of the university, in protest against the deterioration of their living. Students at the Faculty of Computing and Information at the University of Mansoura also started a sit-in at the campus to protest the failure of the Ministry of Higher Education and the Supreme Council of Universities to establish a syndicate for college graduates guaranteeing them their rights.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
