Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi has ratified a law under which government employees found to be drug users can be dismissed.
The law was approved by Parliament in May after Transport Minister Kamel El Wazir decided to toughen penalties on train drivers who were proved to be taking drugs.
Investigations into a deadly train crash in the Upper Egyptian city of Sohag in March proved that drug use played a role in the accident which claimed the lives of at least 19 people and left hundreds injured.
Public sector employees will now be subjected to random drug tests without prior notification. Whoever is found to be using recreational drugs will be fired.
The law, which was ratified by Mr El Sisi on Sunday, also stipulates that employees must report any drugs they are using, whether they think it will influence a test result or not.
The new law was passed to protect the state’s public services from the “imminent dangers” of employing drug users, according to the announcement in Egypt's official gazette.
Under the legislation, an employer also has the right to end a drug user’s contract without any notice or permission from a court or other legal bodies.
A committee put together by the Social Solidarity Ministry conducted a study of 327,000 public sector employees from March 2019 to March this year to determine how many of them were drug users.
The results of the study were announced in April by Minister of Social Solidarity Nevine El Kabbaj. They showed that about 2.5 per cent of subjects were drug users. Hashish, tramadol and morphine were the drugs most commonly used.
