Around 35,000 public sector employees have not received their salaries yet. The situation has become well-known; the authorities refuse to adjust wages, and salaries for public sector workers no longer cover the cost of commuting from home to work. On top of all this, the authorities have managed to suppress a general strike that deprived workers of "crumbs" of their salaries in hopes of some correction, but they have failed to process salaries and wages due to delays in receiving lists from ministries and departments to the Treasury Directorate in the Ministry of Finance, compounded by a bank strike.
The return of treasury employees in the Ministry of Finance from their strike occurred on Friday, June 30. It took them a few days to finalize the salary lists for military personnel and about 111,000 retirees. However, sources from the Ministry of Finance indicate that military departments are the only ones that can finalize their lists without much effort, unlike other employees whose lists are processed one by one. As other public sector employees gradually returned from the strike, lists from various ministries and state institutions began to come in. Consequently, the salaries that have not yet been received by their beneficiaries will be processed within today or tomorrow at the latest, especially since treasury employees have been working since Monday, July 1, to finalize the salaries and allowances for about 35,000 beneficiaries, including primary and secondary school teachers, with salary transfers expected to start at the end of the week. This allows for the usual 10-day preparation period.
Additionally, it remains unclear what salaries public sector employees will actually receive. They are supposed to receive a social assistance equivalent to one month's salary, a corrected transportation allowance, and an incentive salary, but for the fourth consecutive month, there has been no social assistance or transportation allowance in many ministries, while authority suppression came amid promises for an incentive salary. Sources from the Ministry of Finance state that "employees have not received social assistance since the end of March and will not receive it this month, meaning there are no allocations for the fourth consecutive month." Furthermore, finance employees have not received transportation allowances for three months, similar to other ministries, with the duration varying based on the availability of transportation allocations in each ministry. Some employees in different departments receive transportation allowances of 24,000 Lebanese Lira for each working day, but no one has been paid the established rate of 64,000 Lira, even at the end of July.
Some blame the employees for the delays in salary processing. However, the root of the problem lies in the fact that the strike lacked legitimate representation to decide whether to continue or halt it, which allowed a group of general directors to threaten and exploit employees in order to clear their names with the Prime Minister and the authority's ministers in his government.
