Such over-employment results in various problems:
• Over-staffing in the public sector leads to a situation in which nobody feels
responsible for the work that has to be done, so that efficiency is generally
low.
• Many laws introduced in the socialist era under Nasser are still in force,
making it next to impossible to dismiss employees who do not fulfil their
obligations. So many civil servants in fact have two or three jobs, neglect-
ing their official work, which secures them certain privileges as well as a
pension when they retire, and working much more devotedly in their other
jobs as taxi drivers, hotel employees or craftsmen. So there exist side by
side a weak public sector and a highly productive informal sector.
• Since the state has to pay enormous sums of money amounting to one-
third of its public budget (ibid.) to its huge number of employees, salaries
must necessarily be kept low. In 2003 a young state-employed university
graduate received a monthly salary of about US$25. If he wanted to buy
1 kg of meat, he had to spend one-sixth of it. Such conditions inevitably
lead to corruption, dishonesty and negligence in the public service.
• The process of economic transformation is extremely difficult because of
the situation described. To make privatized businesses function effectively
and to reduce their production costs great numbers of employees have to
be dismissed at the outset.