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Egypt’s railway authority purges 190 staff members accusing them of links to MB

September 3, 2021 at 12:06 pm

A train station in Cairo, Egypt on 28 May 2018 [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP.Getty Images]

Egypt’s railway authority has purged 190 members of staff, including train signallers and drivers, on the accusation that they have links to the Muslim Brotherhood, reports Al-Monitor.

“A list of Brotherhood-linked employees and saboteurs was sent to the security agencies, and they were booted out by the railway authority,” said the authority’s chief of human resources Mohamed Hussein.

Four have been sacked whilst the others have been moved into administrative roles. “No individual will be appointed in sensitive positions in the railway authority unless he is cleared by the security agencies,” Hussein added.

At the end of June Egypt’s parliament approved a draft bill which will enable employers to dismiss government employees who belong to a “terror group” in an explicit reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been outlawed in the country since the military take-over of power.

The proposal applies to employees working in government ministries, local council units, public sector companies, public organisations, and other governmental authorities. Most parliamentarians agreed that the bill works to “protect national security.”

 READ: Egypt bans books on Muslim Brotherhood entering mosques

The bill followed comments made by Egypt’s Transport Minister Kamel Al-Wazir to parliament that employees affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood had undermined the authority’s work.

Al-Wazir called on authorities to change the law and help dismiss the “forces of darkness and evil” and has said that there are 268 Brotherhood members and other extremists working on the railways.

The transport minister himself had been under pressure to resign following a string of deadly car crashes in the space of just a few months. In April, 23 people were killed when a train derailed in the city of Toukh in Dakahliya.

Two trains crashed in Sohag killing 20 people, 15 were injured when a train derailed travelling from Cairo to Mansoura and three people were killed when a train hit a car in Dakahliya.

For years critics have called on the government to modernise the dilapidated railway system in the country and blamed corruption and lack of investment for the huge number of crashes.

Between 2003 and 2017 CAMPAS estimated that there were 16,000 train accidents.

Earlier in the week Egypt’s Ministry of Endowments announced it would prevent books on extremism and the Muslim Brotherhood from entering mosques, with one official calling on mosques and Islamic centres to “purify” libraries from Brotherhood publications.

READ: In Egypt it is a crime to read books