BEIRUT: The parliamentary joint committees convened Monday to reexamine the public sector wage hike draft law, two weeks after Parliament failed to pass the long-awaited proposal.
Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil, Defense Minister Samir Moqbel, Education Minister Elias Bou Saab and Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi attended the committees meeting, which was headed by Deputy Parliament Speaker Farid Makari.
On Oct. 1, Speaker Nabih Berri sent the controversial draft wage hike law back to joint committees during a legislative session, citing the opposition of many sectors to the bill.
While private school teachers protested their exclusion from the proposed bill, other lawmakers, including the defense minister, opposed the draft law because they said it was unfair to military personnel.
Moqbel has said he would he would soon submit to the Cabinet a separate draft law specially suited to military personnel, arguing that soldiers and other security forces members could not be equated with office-based civil servants.
Before stepping into the committees meeting in Nejmeh Square, Moqbel reiterated his call to separate civil servants from military personnel.
Bou Saab, however, said separating the two would “take us back to square one.”
The salary scale draft law, expected to cost the treasury some $1.2 billion annually before the inclusion of the military personnel, has been a demand of public sector employees and teachers for the past three years.
The Union Coordination Committee, representing a coalition of civil servants and teachers, has held numerous protests and observed several nationwide strikes in a bid to pressure the government to pass the bill.
Lawmakers have overcome massive obstacles to come to an agreement on the draft law, including a balance between revenues and expenditures, a demand made by several politicians and the country’s Central Bank.
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