President of the Public Administration Employees Association, Nawal Nasr
The head of the Public Administration Employees Association, Nawal Nasr, confirmed the continuation of the strike until the causes of this strike were removed, and stressed the demands that secure the minimum acceptable level, including the removal of the public administration employee from underground to the face of the earth.
Nasr, in an interview with Al-Hurra channel within the Lebanese scene program with Mona Saliba, called for a criminal audit at the Ministry of Finance. She expressed the union’s readiness to meet with government representatives if they wanted to listen to us, but revealed that they requested an appointment from the Minister of Finance three or four times, but he did not give them any date. She said that the meeting between them and representatives of the government happened once, and the government did not repeat it, and it does not want to do so.
We are not only asking for money numbers, but for a policy that provides us with health and hospital coverage and fair transportation allowances, she said. Referring to a decrease in the value of the salary to the level of five percent, she said, “We want it at least fifty percent,” and demanded that it be calculated even on the lowest platform. Nasr also affirmed adherence to the fact that any increase should be included in the basic salary and not as social assistance, and that the increase should be linked to the development of the exchange rate so that what happened would not be repeated in the series of ranks and salaries, as they gave us the series and then raised the price of the dollar. She pointed out that some of the exchange compensation has become equal to 2000 or 3000 dollars.
Nasr stressed that they support reforming the public sector and reducing illegal employees at least, especially since these people enter the public administration as nepotism with salaries higher than the salaries of employees and arrange additional burdens, and there is discrimination in the salaries of these.
She said, there is a public institution that takes its salaries from the state, such as Ogero, and these salaries are not monitored and amount to tens of millions. This single institution, which has no more than 2500 employees, takes half of what the public administration employees take, where the number of employees is many times the number of Ogero employees.
Nasr called for a careful study of the salaries of employees in the public sector to know the value of what goes to salaries and the value of waste, deals and thefts. Nasr spoke about an unnamed former finance minister’s secretary who said that she had received $70 million in compensation.
Journalist and economic writer Mounir Younes
Journalist and economic writer Munir Younes considered that the issue of public sector salaries should be resolved in the short, medium and long term. In the short term, employees must be given subsidies, but outside the salary. In the medium and long term, the salary crisis is one of dozens of crises that must be resolved, such as electricity, public finance, banks, deposits, and others. These multi-reproductive problems will be solved through agreements with the International Monetary Fund.
Yunus explained that salaries on the eve of the crisis constituted roughly between 35% and 38% of public spending. He said, in the late nineties, the cost of public sector salaries was almost not worth more than two billion dollars. On the eve of the crisis, these salaries reached $8 billion, and this is a colossal extravagance without an increase in productivity.
He said there was $100 billion spent in loans, mostly interest and salaries. When the loans “dry”, the young people reached out to deposits and took a hundred billion from them, as he put it. Thus, they invested two hundred billion in loans and deposits, and a third of them went to spending salaries.
Yunus considered that the permanent and sustainable solution comes after the public sector is cleansed of its surpluses. The Minister of Finance asked: Are there sufficient revenues in the country for employees, yes or no? Is the country able to bear duties or taxes without deflation? And he continued, where is the Minister of Finance, “anyone is hearing about something”?
Yunus considered that the problem today remains in politics. We elected them a few months ago, and today they take the decision. Despite his support for the rightful demands of the employees, he spoke about a large percentage of those he described as job fillers at the hands of the ruling parties and currents since the nineties until today.
Head of the Syndicate of Food Importers, Hani Bohsali
The head of the Syndicate of Food Importers, Hani Bohsali, considered that the situation is catastrophic and is heading for the worse with the disruption of the entry of food and medical supplies into the country, after the public administration’s strike entered its sixth week, while more goods were accumulating in the port. He considered that keeping these goods in the port costs a day no less than 100,000 dollars, and this will reflect an increase in the prices of goods. He considered that the strike, instead of being against the state, became a strike against the people. He stressed the need for an immediate solution to the issue of the employees of the departments concerned with sampling the goods at the port, and these goods are subject to damage, and this would expose the merchants to great losses. Bohsali asked what if the commercial sector, in turn, decided to strike like the public sector. And what if the delivery of basic goods such as rice, sugar and yeast stops. He also warned of the high cost of these goods due to the high cost of storing them for additional weeks in the port, which will also reflect an increase in their price. The cost of storage has become equal to half the price of these goods, and therefore its price will increase by fifty percent.
He stressed that food security is in danger if the reality of the strike continues as it is, and there are traders who are complaining today about the loss of goods.
Bohsali pointed out that the strike led some merchants to stop any new orders, and consequently, the continuation of the strike would negatively affect the arrival of new goods, and this is a greater disaster.