Contract workers accuse EDL of violating deal

BEIRUT: Electricite du Liban’s contract workers accused Tuesday EDL of violating the deal that ended a months-long crisis last December.

The workers said the state-owned company’s administration has imposed difficult entrance tests, allowed contractors to sack workers and failed to keep its promise to revoke the lawsuits filed against four leaders of the contract workers’ movement.

In a press conference held at EDL’s headquarters, the workers’ spokesperson Hussein Allam said the material that workers are obliged to study for the entrance exam at EDL was very difficult.

“We call on the officials, the sponsors of the deal and the Civil Service Council to stop the massacre called ‘exam,’” Allam said. “Or else we will protest in front of the CSC on the day of the ominous test.”

In a phone call with The Daily Star, contract worker Hussein Qorqmaz explained that the material for the tests included subjects related to accounting, language and computer literacy that many workers were not familiar with.

“We would excel in oral interviews, because we all have long experience in what we do,” Qorqmaz said. “But these impossible-to-pass written tests are not fair; we’ve been out of school for more than 20 years.”

The test was supposed to include an oral part that was eliminated without any clear explanation, he added.

The CSC’s exam is supposed to take place on February 7, according to Qorqmaz, but the workers will not attend unless the test material is reconsidered.

The test is limited to the contract workers and no new applicants will sit for it, but imposing the university-level standard questions will leave half the workers with little chance of passing.

Tuesday’s statement also condemned the sacking of more than 22 contract workers by a sub-contractor called EPS working in Mount Lebanon with the service providing company NEU, a subsidiary of Debbas Group.

The workers said such sacking is another violation of the political deal that ended the strike, which stated that no workers would be sacked before the CSC exam.

The workers also slammed EDL’s leadership for refusing to revoke the lawsuits filed against the four leaders of the workers’ movements; Ahmad Shoeib, Lubnan Makhoul, Bilal Bajouk and Jad El-Remeh.

It has been two months since the contact workers ended a 4-months strike at EDL’s headquarters.

The strike, which blocked entry into the facility, called for full-time employment for all of the 1700 contract workers at EDL, or a promise that it would happen after the end of the service providers’ contracts in 2016.