The caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati gathered ten ministers and four directors general during a meeting of the "ministerial committee tasked with addressing the financial crisis's impacts on public sector operations." They agreed on "developing and improving revenues for the treasury, requesting the Ministry of Finance to prepare a detailed report on public finances and treasury conditions, and requesting the Civil Service Council to provide a detailed report on the conditions of public administration." This is aimed at enhancing productivity and making necessary decisions to ensure the continuity of public administration work.
A few days prior, Mikati issued a circular requesting "all public administrations, public institutions, municipalities, municipal federations, councils, funds, bodies, and administrations with attached budgets to identify all the benefits and services their employees receive and any mandatory expenses related to the calculation based on the official minimum wage. The information must be comprehensive, detailed, and clear and is the responsibility of the preparer. The requested information should be submitted to the General Directorate of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers within a maximum of twenty days."
In reality, this ministerial committee has been operating for months but has only managed to agree on temporary solutions to address the collapse in the value of public sector salaries, whether through social assistance, productivity allowances, or transportation allowances. These solutions have not resolved the crisis of public sector employees' reluctance to return to their jobs amid seemingly fatal challenges:
First, the decline in public treasury revenues, if not their total absence, prevents financing any increases in public sector salaries.
Second, the experience of raising the salary scale remains evident to all, revealing the political class's failure to establish a financially sound wage scale. In this context, the government circular noted that "increasing the minimum wage would have a financial impact on many allowances, compensations, and other benefits received by public sector employees and others, necessitating a proactive study for any anticipated measures before their adoption to clarify their implications on public finances, paving the way for making appropriate decisions based on clear and complete data after an initial assessment of their financial impact."
Third, there is a lack of accurate figures regarding the size of the public sector following the confusion reflected in the series of salaries approved based on an estimated cost of approximately 1200 billion lira, which turned out to be around 3000 billion.
The gap in identifying the number of employees and contractors in the public sector stems from the randomness characterizing the employments in public institutions, which number 91 and operate with autonomy (such as electricity, water authorities, government hospitals...), due to political employments in various legal forms, hindering the central authority's ability to determine their actual and true figures.
According to researcher Mohamed Shamseddine from "International Information," the public sector workforce, including public administrations, public institutions, and municipalities (1055 municipalities employing approximately 15,000 workers), as well as security and military agencies, was estimated in 2019 at about 320,000. It currently stands at around 300,000 after approximately 7,000 have retired or resigned, while the number of retirees or beneficiaries is about 124,000, most of whom are from security and military agencies.
He notes that the cost of the public sector was estimated at around 12,000 billion lira annually (8 billion dollars before the crisis), equivalent to about 1000 billion monthly. It is assumed that the social assistance paid over two months, alongside productivity and transportation allowances, totals around 1000 billion lira (i.e., 500 billion each month). However, if public institutions are included as beneficiaries alongside public administrations, the figure could rise significantly and become uncertain.
The ministerial committee, after a series of meetings, adopted a policy of piecemeal solutions addressing each ministry or sector, akin to buying time and resorting to "piecemeal" treatments. It decided to seek a comprehensive framework for the public sector salary crisis after obtaining two studies, one concerning the state of public administration and the other regarding the Ministry of Finance's capability to secure funding.
However, the fundamental issue lies in how to secure revenues to cover these expenses, as the matter of the customs dollar revealed that Finance Minister Youssef Khalil is cautious about making any unpopular decisions that might provoke public discontent, at the clear request of Speaker of the House Nabih Berri, who prohibits him from taking any step that could lead to increased fees or taxes, even raising electricity tariffs remains rejected by the Shiite duo.
Thus, some members of the ministerial committee suggested going to the Parliament where the budget is being discussed so that the fate of salaries could be included in the budget, based on a comprehensive plan after the Ministry of Finance prepares a detailed study of the resources that will cover salary increases and accurately assesses them after thoroughly reviewing the administration's situation. The purpose of reaching out to Parliament is to impose a reality and hold lawmakers accountable regarding this pressing living issue and to prevent the continuation of the bidding game that has become a hallmark of the new Parliament.
