BEIRUT: Electricite du Liban's administration called Wednesday on the Lebanese government to forcibly expel contract workers staging a three-month sit-in at its Beirut headquarters and prosecute them for "raping" the facility.
In a statement in which it slammed the ongoing strike, the company urged Lebanon’s prime minister and its ministers of interior and justice to “liberate the institution from its occupiers and put an end to this deviant situation, the price of which is primarily paid by the Lebanese citizen.”
The statement said that the Lebanese penal code calls for punishing with a six-month jail term and a fine those who attempt to “rape” a water or electricity public sector facility by halting its operations.
“If EDL has not yet reached the stage of total collapse, and has succeeded to prevent total blackout, it is due to the great efforts by the administration, the executives and the employees,” the statement said.
The contract workers’ have been preventing company employees and executives from entering their office since launching their strike in August.
The workers, who had been employed by private service providers since 2012, are demanding full-time employment at EDL, or a promise of full-time employment after the private companies’ contracts end in 2016.
The strike erupted after EDL announced that it will only recruit 897 of the nearly 2,000 contract workers. EDL says it cannot absorb all the workers with full-time positions.
The company recently announced it will start distributing bills for some subscribers after printing them using machines outside their headquarters.
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