Al-Sayed affirmed his solidarity with public administration employees, pointing out that their salaries are no longer sufficient to cover the most basic living needs, and calling on the government and the President of the Republic to do justice to them and grant them their full rights without installments.
For his part, Hamada stressed that public sector employees have been suffering since 2019 from a decline in their rights and living conditions, considering that the state is capable of providing justice to them, but it is adopting a “policy of physical siege” against them. He pointed out that more than 30 percent of employees took the decision to migrate forcefully, stressing the continuation of movements to obtain rights.
In turn, Suleiman Franjieh spoke on behalf of permanent employees in the public administration, stressing that their demands focus on correcting wages to keep pace with the high prices, ensuring health and social coverage, achieving job security and consolidating rights through a limited competition or their inclusion in the retirement plan law, pointing out that the number of permanent employees does not exceed 650 employees. He also called for speedy approval of the school scholarship decree.
In conclusion, the association’s advisor, Khaled Al-Amouri, refused to hold the ranks and salaries chain responsible for the economic collapse, noting that its annual cost amounted, according to his figures, to about one billion and 560 million dollars, compared to the annual losses of the Electricité du Liban that amounted to one billion and 650 million dollars.
Al-Amouri confirmed that the public administration collects about 80 percent of the state’s revenues, and that revenues since 2022 have exceeded the estimates contained in the budget, which, according to him, allows the state to finance employees’ rights.
He identified the employees’ demands with three main headings: correcting wages and salaries to restore their purchasing power before the crisis, increasing the state’s contribution to the state employees’ cooperative to raise social benefits and educational scholarships, and amending the transportation and fuel allowance, demanding that the transportation allowance be immediately raised to one and a half million liras and that the fuel allowance be granted according to the actual price.
