"45,000 workers risking lives everyday in Egypt's limestone quarries", 09 April 2015

The limestone quarries are the economic lifeblood of this region.Around 45,000 people, including children, work in an estimated 1,500 quarries, digging out stones. But the work, paying $7 to $13 a day, is backbreaking and dangerous.These stones will later be used in construction or powdered to be used by pharmaceutical and ceramic companies. Workers have suffered amputations and electrocutions, sometimes dying. One laborer, 15-year-old Baskharoon Mounir, lost his left arm to a cutting machine in 2013 after working for only a month without safety equipment or training...Injuries from electrocution are not uncommon among quarry workers who may step on exposed wires that snake across the entire quarry.Deaths and injuries largely go undocumented, says Hossam Wasfy, the executive director of Wadi El Nil, a charity that focuses on child labor. In one village called Nazlet Abeed, there were 18 quarry deaths alone in 2009, he says...