Lebanese prime minister’s wife stirs up debate over low-skilled jobs
The wife of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab has drawn fire for suggesting that Lebanese could take lowskilled jobs typically held by migrant workers as poverty and unemployment soar.
“We could dispense with migrant workers,” Nuwar Muwlawi said in an interview with staterun Radio Lebanon on Friday. “Women sitting at home could work in homes ... that is a simple example. Janitors, fuel stations [jobs] would be for locals.”
Ms Muwlawi’s comments sparked debate on social media, with many in agreement and others using the derogatory hashtag “Hassan, control your wife”.
“All governments in the world are trying to improve the conditions of their people except for Hassan Diab’s wife, she wants girls and women to work as maids and housekeepers,” one Twitter user wrote.
The prime minister’s office said Ms Muwlawi meant that the “Lebanese must depend on themselves in light of the difficult economic conditions that Lebanon is going through”.
Ms Muwlawi declined to comment on the debate.
Economist and former labour minister Charbel Nahas said the suggestion that Lebanese could take low-skilled jobs was taboo.
“Ms Muwlawi’s words may be obvious, but they hurt the sense of superiority of the Lebanese,” he told The National.
Those siding with Ms Muwlawi shared the hashtag “There is no shame in work”.
“With more than 33 per cent of Lebanese citizens living under the poverty line with almost no food and proper housing, what she proposed would be an opportunity for these people to have some income,” Sara Faraj wrote on Twitter.
Lebanon is experiencing its worst financial crisis yet. The pound has been in free fall for months. Officials said that nearly half the population would become impoverished and unemployment would rise above 35 per cent.
Lebanese families employ approximately 200,000 workers from Africa and Asia, with few labour protections and many in conditions that human rights organisations compared with slavery.
In 2017, the Lebanese intelligence agency General Security estimated that at least two migrant workers died each week, most of them by suicide.
One of the major draws for workers going to Lebanon was a currency pegged to the dollar. Migrants could send dollars home to their families.
But with the dollar disappearing from the local market and the pound crashing in value, that incentive has gone.
According to a study led by Mr Nahas when he was labour minister between 2011 and 2012, Lebanese households hired foreign domestic help to show affiliation with a high social status in a society plagued by corruption and nepotism.
“We suspected that several variables could explain why people hired a maid: whether both the husband and wife worked; whether they had young children, or whether there were elderly or handicapped people in the household,” Mr Nahas said.
“What was surprising was that none of the variables had any influence on whether people had a maid or not. Only their income had an impact,” he said.
“That means that people hired maids because they were important for status, not because they responded to a need described by the variables.”
Despite many foreign workers leaving Lebanon, there was little chance that the Lebanese would take up their jobs, especially as domestic helpers, said Mr Nahas.
“There will be a fierce resistance. Working as a maid is stigmatised now and once that happens, there is very little chance for that to change.”