The Minister of Communications in the caretaker government, Johnny al-Qarm, confirmed to "Nokta a-Satr" via Voice of Lebanon that what Director-General of Ogero, Imad Kordieh, said about the risk of internet disruption is true. The Ministry of Communications has not received any funds for maintenance since the beginning of the year. He continued: "To ensure the operation of public services, an internet and communications outage is strictly prohibited in Lebanon. In the worst-case scenario, the two companies, Alfa and Touch, will have to cover expenses until the Ministry of Finance pays these expenses."
Al-Qarm clarified that "the salaries of Alfa and Touch employees are higher than those of Ogero because the laws allowed for their salaries to be increased, and therefore I demand that Ogero be turned into a joint-stock company so that we can raise the salaries of its employees." He added: "The money collected from citizens does not return to the Ministry of Communications or to Ogero but goes to the Ministry of Finance, and this is the core of the problem." Al-Qarm explained that "under the 2019 budget law, the supplementary budget for the Ministry of Communications was canceled, and I then submitted a request to the Council of Ministers to suspend the implementation of this law until the executive decrees were completed, but it was not implemented. We are currently in the process of resubmitting this request and restoring the supplementary budget in the 2025 budget."
