Cairo - Protesting round the clock in front of the cabinet's headquarters for the third day in a row, Egyptian tax workers said they had reached a dead end and so had nothing left to lose. "We could be dismissed from work, we could be imprisoned or beaten up by security police, but we don't care any more," one of the workers shouted on Wednesday.
The Egyptians - some middle-aged and some elderly - said they would begin a hunger strike Thursday morning if their suffering was further ignored.
"We fear nothing. We just want our rights back," a protestor cried out.
Metres away stood rows of heavily-armed riot police, while truckloads of standby forces could be seen parked in the vicinity. Security personnel ordered that metal cordons be placed around the throngs of workers, but so far no clashes with police had been reported.
The state employees, who are all members of the property tax department, have been picketing for better wages and working conditions since October when they initially organized a mass strike of around 55,000 tax workers.
This week's picket brought together around 500 employees from both southern and northern provinces.
The protestors, standing by the gates of the cabinet quarters in downtown Cairo, will not collect any taxes until their demands are met.
Suleiman Rashed, from Giza's tax division, said he had been working in the state-run institution for more than 25 years and his salary had only reached 450 Egyptian pounds (81 dollars) a month.
An accountant in the same department, Gamal Hassanein, claimed his net income was 380 pounds (69 dollars). "A state employee taking only this much? Imagine," he said.
"Sometimes, they deduct 50 per cent of our efforts benefits because we do not meet the desired tax collection quota," Rashed told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The tax collectors usually face difficulties during money collection.
"Some people refuse to pay, and we follow them around. But sometimes, we fail to collect. What do we do then? Shoot the citizen (who refuses to pay)?" Rashed shouted at the top of his voice.
"I work in the countryside collecting taxes from farmers, and we face a lot of dangers there too. We are beaten up sometimes, and others are even shot when they pursue the farmers for payment," a tax collector from Monofiyah province agreed.
On the protest site, it is clear that workers have lost patience with both their union and government.
Calling the finance minister, the labour union head and even members of the cabinet "liars, scoundrels and thieves," the protestors said they stood alone: "Poor, hungry and no better than beggars."
So far, leaders of the strike say the government has not been responsive to their movement, and demands that they be treated like their colleagues in departments run by the Ministry of Finance have not been met.
According to the workers, a recent move by the government has caused the reassignment of the tax department workers.
The senior and high-ranking tax employees became answerable to the Ministry of Finance, receiving higher incomes and yearly benefits. Others were placed under locality governance. "These are the ones who do not have enough connections," claimed one of the workers.
The angry protestors want the discrepancies in wages between employees to be eliminated. The labour union earlier deemed the workers' pleas legitimate but refused to back up their strike.
Hussein Mugawer, head of the labour union, told al-Masri al-Yom newspaper earlier that "a strike will complicate ongoing negotiations (with the government). The policy of arm-twisting that the workers are following will not work."
"Mugawer claimed he had talks with the (finance) minister. But we know he didn't. They all ignore us," Rashed said.
"They have no hearts, no children or wives or parents," another protestor said, describing how "inhuman" he believed the authorities were. "We are spending our days here on the bare pavement and they feel nothing for us. Where is the mercy?"
In some provinces, workers told
