Agricultural Bank of Egypt ‘arbitrarily’ dismissed hundreds of employees since 2020

Hundreds of employees at the state-owned Agricultural Bank of Egypt have been dismissed over the last two years, according to former bank employees who told Mada Masr that the dismissals came after an internal human resources directive said there was no longer a need to conduct an investigation prior to firing staff.

An MP claimed last week that over 1,000 employees lost their jobs over the two-year period. The wave of dismissals, a number of employees said, began after the current chairman of the bank’s board of directors, Alaa Farouk, assumed his position in February 2020, succeeding the current Agriculture Minister Al-Sayed al-Qusayr.

“No measures were taken against me prior to the dismissal decision. I was not referred for investigation or warned,” said Amal al-Tayeb, who used to work in the bank’s planning department in Giza. The decision to lay Tayeb off was issued in February 2021, without specific mention of the reasons behind it. “The decision merely alleged that I committed ‘a serious mistake,’ without alluding at all to the nature of that mistake,” Tayeb said.

Tayeb’s health insurance was immediately terminated, even though she relies on it for treatment for a chronic heart condition. Tayeb turned to the labor court to appeal for compensation, and the bank followed suit, making a legal demand that she repay the value of some loan installments she stopped paying when her salary was cut off. 

Ashraf Abdel Mohsen, who began working as a bank inspector in Monufiya in 1997, had a similar experience, having been dismissed in 2021 while he was on sick leave due to chronic health issues.

"It is clear that all the dismissals were based on alleged, unspecified serious mistakes," Ashraf al-Sherbiny, a lawyer at the Center for Trade Union and Workers  Services who has met with a number of dismissed workers from the bank, told Mada Masr.

The bank’s employees are subject to both the 2003 unified labor law as well as the bank’s internal regulations, Sherbiny explained. “However, the terms of the labor law supersede any internal regulation if the latter poses a contradiction,” the lawyer added.

The contracts of the laid-off employees, explained the lawyer, were permanent rather than temporary. Legal termination of permanent employment, Sherbiny added, calls for certain measures to be taken if the decision is due to reasons the labor law deems legitimate for dismissal. These measures include “referral to an internal investigation and recourse to a labor court, which did not happen.”

According to the labor law, arbitrarily dismissed workers are not entitled to return to their workplace, the lawyer explained, adding that if a labor court determines that they were fired arbitrarily, it would then rule that they be provided compensation.

Mada Masr tried to reach Alaa Farouk for comment but did not hear back until the time of publication.