Egypt to send 1K seasonal workers to Cyprus in pilot phase of agreement

CAIRO – 13 June 2024: The delegations of the labor ministries in Egypt and Cyprus met on the sidelines of the 112th session of the International Labor Conference (ILC) held in Geneva to discuss the implementation mechanisms of the MoU signed between the two countries for the former to send workers to the latter.

The document provides that Egypt sends 1,000 workers in the first year, which will be the pilot phase. And, later, the number can be upped. It is noted that the figure with Greece was 5,000 and there are plans for it to reach 10,000.

The agreement signed between Egypt and Greece in 2022 provides that the Egyptian laborers would be granted a nine-month stay every year to make up for the shortage in agricultural workers.

Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum Dimitris Karidis, who was meeting the Egyptian minister of labor in Cairo in May, stated that his country wanted to expand the agreement it had with Egypt on seasonal agricultural workers to extend to the sectors of constructions and tourism among others. He also pledged to consider extending the duration of seasonal employment contracts from nine months to 24.

In the same month, Minister of Immigration and Egyptian Expats Soha Gendi stated that the Egyptian and Italian governments were in the process of setting up a center for employment and legal migration.

The center's mission will be training and qualifying Egyptians to work abroad as well as acquainting them with the laws and culture of the country they are heading to.

Similarly, the minister met in June with Ambassador of Netherlands to Cairo Peter Mollema to discuss establishing a Dutch migration center in Egypt within the country's "Survival Boats" initiative that qualifies Egyptian laborers to work in Europe.

Minister Gendi noted that the center would help learn more about the needs of the Dutch labor market, and hence, deliver the suitable training to youth in governorates that used to produce the largest numbers of illegal migrants. On that front, the minister highlighted that no single illegal migrants boat had sailed towards Europe since 2016.