A worker stacks bricks at a quarry in the desert of the Minya governorate, in Egypt. In the limestone quarries of Minya province, south of Cairo, labourers in sandals and makeshift masks use unsheathed rotor blades to gouge the white, fossil-rich rock into house bricks. The workers in the snow-white landscape – farmers and university graduates among them – complain about the scant safety measures, lack of social and medical insurance despite some having lost arms, legs or fingers in accidents and low earnings of $10 to $16 a day. Minya’s governor has ordered that a hospital be built near the quarries, local officials said. With double-digit unemployment in a nation battered by political and economic turmoil since a 2011 uprising, the quarries attract men unable to find work elsewhere.