Jumblat: Financial Situation Must Be Taken into Consideration when Approving Wage Hike

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat hoped that a wage hike with “reasonable” figures would be adopted, but defended the people's rights for the raise.

He said in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website: “Parliament and the syndicate committees must take into consideration the general financial situation and the Lebanese treasury when adopting the hike.”

He warned that given the current reality, the approval of the raise would be “pointless and it would harm the financial sector.”

A wage scale with “reasonable and un-inflated numbers” should be adopted, “not one with compensations that even the most advanced European countries would not be able to afford,” noted Jumblat.

“If only the popular action on the ground over approving the wage hike could have been used to push for economic, financial, and administrative reform,” added the MP.

Reforming the energy sector should be the first step through increasing the production and improving coverage and the collection of taxes, he explained.

He lamented the fact that Lebanon's economy does not garner enough attention from officials and that they only pay attention to it when people take action on the ground.

The SCC, a coalition of private and public school teachers and public sector employees, held on Monday protests across Lebanon to pressure the parliament into approving the public sector pay raise without amendments by May 25.

Public sector employees and teachers have been on strike since last Wednesday to urge MPs to approve the scale without the amendments introduced to it by a ministerial-parliamentary committee and without installments.

M.T.

H.K.