Dozens of Egyptian TV employees were summoned for investigation on charges of protesting, stopping work, and “disturbing social peace.”

Cairo - : Sources on the Egyptian official TV, Maspero, revealed that dozens of workers were summoned for administrative investigation, against the background of the protests that the state TV has witnessed for more than a month. According to the sources, the investigations included a number of workers in the production sector, three from the news sector, seven from the general secretariat sector, and two from the economic sector.

The investigation workers faced charges of “stopping work, disturbing social peace, demonstrating and raising banners.”

The investigations resulted in penalties for deducting a portion of the monthly wage, ranging from five to 15 days.

The protests date back to early last January, due to the announcement of a new system for attendance and departure via electronic fingerprint, which requires workers to attend for seven hours a day for five days a week. The decision angered the workers as it impedes their association with additional work to face the weak salaries in the National Media Authority due to the suspension of annual bonuses several years ago.

Although the new system for attendance and departure was practically stopped as a result of the protests, the demonstrations continued, calling for the payment of arrears of financial dues, and the dismissal of Hussein Zein, head of the National Media Authority. The latter tried, earlier, to absorb the anger of the “Maspero” employees, and issued a decision to disburse a part, which he described as not a small, of the late bonuses due to “Maspero” employees, explaining that the total of this amount will be within the limits of the amount received from the Ministry of Finance recently, which is 60 million pounds. However, "Maspero" protesters confirmed that the value of the bonuses and delayed pensions amounted to about 720 million pounds, which prompted them to continue their protests.