Lebanon’s public workers strike as pay-cut fears grow over government austerity plan
▶ School, hospital and administration staff protest about ‘starvation politics’ threat to public-sector employees
Thousands of government employees rallied in front of the Lebanese parliament yesterday to warn the government not to cut their salaries after repeated hints that tough austerity measures will be imposed in an attempt to boost the economy.
“It’s the first time they dare talk about cutting our salaries. If they go ahead with this, there will be a revolution,” said Michele Ajaltouni, one of 2,000 tenured professors at Lebanese University, the country’s only public university.
In a country where the government is perceived as corrupt and inefficient, a move to cut salaries would be a “red line”, according to demonstrators’ placards.
“No to starvation politics: no to bailing out the deficit from the pockets of public sector employees,” one banner read.
The government is presently working on the 2019 budget, which will probably include measures to reduce the deficit.
This was one of the many promises made to the international community last year during a donor conference in Paris. The country received nearly $11 billion (Dh40.39bn) in pledges to revamp its crumbling infrastructure.
Many now fear cuts to the public sector after Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil tweeted on Saturday that salaries should be cut to reduce the country’s ballooning $85bn debt “or there will be no salaries left for anyone”.
In late January, shortly after the government was formed, it warned of “difficult and painful” reforms ahead.
The state-run National News Agency, which in a show of solidarity devoted its programming to the protests yesterday, reported strikes in public schools, hospitals and administration offices, one day after retired army officers blocked several motorways with burning tyres.
In a rare public criticism of the government, the director of the Tourism Ministry, Nada Sardouk also took part in the strike. “We know of the many burdens and debts carried by the state, but the solution is not in the pockets of employees,” she said. “There are other solutions.”
Living conditions in Lebanon are already difficult – 40 per cent of Lebanese live beneath the poverty line, according to a pamphlet distributed by the organisers of the demonstration in front of parliament yesterday. According to the United Nations, nearly a third of Lebanese citizens live on less than $270 a month.
“The government does not respect social justice,” said Issam Khalifeh, a former president of the Lebanese University’s teachers’ association, speaking in front of parliament.
Like many other demonstrators, Mr Khalifeh argued that the money could be saved elsewhere. “Mismanagement at the Port of Beirut costs $3bn a year alone,” he said. “Tax evasion also costs $105m.”
Such data is not readily available in Lebanon, and it was unclear from where the unions obtained their figures.
“I hope that the bigger the protest movement, the more this will push the government to find other ways of financing the deficit,” said Youssef Daher, the current president of the Lebanese University’s teachers’ association.
Public sector salaries represent 40 per cent of government expenditure, before debt service and subsidies to Lebanon’s national utility company, Electricité du Liban.
Some institutions, such as the nuclear agency and the railroad transport department, have becoming running jokes. They employ hundreds of people despite there being no nuclear facilities nor trains in Lebanon, Nassib Ghobril, chief economist at Byblos Bank, told The National.
“We do not even know how many people are employed in the public sector,” Mr Ghobril said. “Thousands are hired without a clear definition of their work. The number-one priority should be to address these surplus and ‘ghost’ employees.”
In the past four years alone, 31,000 government employees were hired, Mr Ghobril said.
In 2017, a parliamentary committee recommended the closure or merger of 86 public agencies, he said, but this has not been followed up.
The sectarian structure of civil employment – in which the government employs Christians and Muslims in equal proportion to their demographic share – will probably represent an additional hurdle to reform.
About 650 people who successfully passed exams to work with the government two years ago have not yet been hired, said Zeina Mshek, a young secondary schoolteacher who took part in the demonstration in front of parliament.
“The state will not appoint us to our new jobs because we are 75 per cent Muslim and 25 per cent Christian, and they want a religious balance,” she said, holding a banner reading: “Our only fault is that we are not from the right piece of the pie.”
Demonstrators say the entire Lebanese political system must be overhauled.
“We must start with [getting rid of] our MPs, then our ministers, and our president,” said Mrs Ajaltouni, the university teacher. “I’m afraid of nothing. I’ve lived through the civil war. It’s not those idiots who will frighten us.”
The sectarian structure of civil employment in Lebanon will probably represent an additional hurdle to reform