Work permits for non-Egyptian diving staff required for CDWS renewals

[Interceptor121]

I think the issue is the combination of the fact that you need to have a work permit and that you need to have a 10:1 ratio.
If you are a free lance you don't want to pay for a new work permit every time you work for someone so you set up your own company and then always work on the same work permit and bill your customer.
As you have the 10:1 rule, which is geared to big companies, as a small independent contractor you can't go and simply create a company as you would need 10 shadow Egyptian on the book and to pay social security for them. This is not practical and this means it will effectively be impossible to work.

Besides the big operations here in Sharm, and I a not doing names here, have a ratio of 1 employee with a contract to 3 or 4 free lancers. Even if those free lancers are semi permanent the dive centers do not want to employ them otherwise you will have to pay even when they have nothing to do as you cannot give them days off anymore.

So this looks difficult in any case

I do not agree in principle with the statement that there are many bad Egyptian instructors. That is the fault of the facility that got them through. There have been rumors that the IE has been made easy for Egyptians to increase instructors number but if anybody subscribed to this is only their fault

 

[String]

Not so much instructors, its bad quality DMs (its hard to actually FIND an egyptian instructor at all).

I can see 10:1 rule being circumvented by centres suddenly employing LOTS more locals to push trolleys, drive taxis, make tea and so on.

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

As for carrying tanks etc - that IS part of what a DM should be doing. Its preparation for a dive and so on.

It's just one little part and should not dominate other parts of the course, which is usually what happens.

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

(its hard to actually FIND an egyptian instructor at all).

Personally I've never faced this problem before.

 

[Interceptor121]

We have Egyptian instructors catering for all Arab speaking clients.
However due to the clientele being mostly foreign dive centers prefer to employ native speakers (English, Russian, German, Italian and so on) as there is a closer cultural fit.
Egyptian can do an amazing job at learning languages however sometimes their attitude is not in line with non arab guests at least this is what the management of many dive centers think.
I personally know very few instructors and had never had any issue. I have come across some divemasters that were genuine bums. I would not take this as a rule though

 

[Crowley]

At the present time the question of foreign staff vs Egyptian staff is academic.

The Egyptian Dive industry exists solely because of European (mostly) dive professionals, the vast majority of whom are working freelance. If you remove all the freelance staff next year, the Egyptian dive industry will fold - it's that simple. Dive centres don't hire many permanent staff anyway, regardless of ratios, and there are not enough - nowhere near enough - egyptian staff to fill in the vacancies. Even if there were - do they speak enough languages to cater for the tourists who come here? There are cultural and social issues to deal with also - how many FEMALE egyptians work in the dive business?

Nobody here is against the concept of work permits. Nobody wants to work illegally, but the process is expensive and inconvenient and many instructors here are seasonal - who wants to pay hundreds of Euros to come and work here for 6 months?

Enforcing expensive work permits will cripple the industry here - and not just for diving - how many boat captains, engineers, tank fillers, equipment handlers, counter staff, bar staff, camel trainers, taxi drivers, bus drivers, marine security personnel, etc etc would be put out of work by the collapse of the dive industry here? Staff on all levels- from diving dogsbody to dive shop owner - are worried about the current regulations.

Maybe it will all amount to nothing. Pay a few hundred LE and get your ticket. My feeling is that should be some temporary exemption for "essential staff" or something - it's not a work permit, but something akin to the Australian "under 30 work visa" whereby residents of certain countries are entitled to work in Australia simply because they have a visa, and promise not to stay too long. Just please don't make it under-30 only in Egypt! haha!

We are far from an ideal solution, but we need to put some perspective on the reality of life here. The Egyptian tourism industry, at this time, cannot function without foreign staff. Forcing the blanket work permit as it stands may have some serious consequences for the moneymakers here. I'm not suggesting that Egypt should overlook the work permits for foreign staff, but by making the process inexepensive and simple, all parties can be satisfied.

Cheers,

C.

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

What's inexpensive in your opinion? Is 3,000 LE (around 300 GBP) per year expensive for living and working legally in a place like Dahab or Sharm?

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

And regarding the different languages, yes there're very few Egyptians able to communicate in Polish or Russian. The majority of non-Egyptian working staff is British and German though.

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

At the present time the question of foreign staff vs Egyptian staff is academic.

Exactly. As long as we do not have numbers, it'll be just a wild guess.

As far as I know CDWS issued around 4,000 dive professional cards in total (please correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know the ratio of Egyptians to non-Egyptians.

If the industry suffered from low number of staff this Easter (April 2010), this shortage will ring a bell that more dive professionals are needed and will open more opportunities to Egyptians to qualify as dive professionals. It might not be the swiftest solution in the world but that's one very possible scenario (unless the money makers interfere).

 

[Crowley]

Hi Shadow - to answer your points?

No - 3000 LE is not a tall price to pay, however I am reliably informed that the current cost price of a work permit is 1800LE and anything on top of that is "fees". I know some people who have been quoted 1,000 Euros for a work permit.... If I might put my tongue it my cheek, I think it's a small expense for the Egpytian government to pay in order to allow us to support its massive tourist and especially dive industries!!!

Working staff may well have a British and German majority, but the bulk of those are multi-lingual. In recent weeks I've been on boats with Spanish and French divers who did not understand either language - I speak a little of each and helped to translate. Who will cater to all the Hungarians that come here? I work with British, Swiss, German, Austrian, Dutch, Spanish, Columbian, Italian, French, Hungarian, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Russian, Brazilian and Bulgarian instructors - who will look after all those other nationalities?

The principle is not the problem, the problem is the manner in which the pinciple is applied.

Cheers

C.

Splitting CDWS card statistics is equally academic - the simple fact is that many egyptians cannot afford the expense that is required to become an instructor. We are moving along in that many egyptian staff are professionally trained as a by-product of their job, mostly, in my experience, as far as DM. So ja - it would be great of there were more egpytian dive pros - but the way to do that is to encourage and subsidise work in the industry, not simply try and bar foreigners.