BEIRUT: The parliamentary joint committees has accepted the principle of including private school teachers into the public sector wage hike bill proposal, MP Ibrahim Kanaan said Wednesday.
The committees will at a later session look into the details of the wage hike for private school teachers, especially those pertaining to tuition increases Kanaan said.
The salary scale increase for private school teachers would not influence the state treasury, but it may have an impact on private school tuition, political sources have said.
Kanaan also said that the education minister is looking into a mechanism that would allow the incorporation of private school teachers into the salary scale bill without increasing tuition fees. Clarifications over this mechanism will be discussed at a later meeting, he added.
However, the meeting failed to achieve quorum over a salary increase for the public sector, Education Minister Elias Bou Saab said after the session.
The session also failed to agree on whether or not to provide military personnel with the same wage increases given to civil servants and public school teachers.
The issue of salary hikes for the military will be postponed for another session, Kanaan said. Giving the military the same wage hike as civil servants and public school teachers would require the committee to review revenues he added.
Political sources have said that a military wage hike would require the availability of more revenue, and that the committees would be unable to raise the TVA by more 1 percent, which would not generate adequate funding.
A rise in the overall cost of the draft law, currently estimated at $1.2 billion annually, would force lawmakers to find new ways to increase revenues in the face of higher expenditures, according to the sources.
Lawmakers have overcome massive obstacles to agree on the draft law, including balancing revenues and expenditures, a demand made by several politicians and the Cabinet.
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