BEIRUT: Talks over the long-awaited salary scale for the public sector came to impasse again Tuesday, with rival March 8 and March 14 coalitions disagreeing over whether the wage hike and the draft 2015 budget should be studied together.
March 14 MPs boycotted a session by Parliament’s Joint Committees to discuss the salary scale, arguing that the wage hike and the 2015 draft budget were related and should be passed together.
The group also said that the salary scale figures required further study by a parliamentary subcommittee and opposed the fact that the Joint Committees’ session was chaired by the head of Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan, saying this violated the legislature’s bylaws.
Estimated to cost $ 1.2 billion, the salary scale would provide a wage hike to public sector employees including security forces, along with teachers at private and public schools.
The Union Coordination Committee, a coalition of public sector employees and teachers, has spearheaded protests over the past three years to push authorities to endorse the wage hike.
Chaired by Kanaan, the session, mostly attended by March 8 MPs, lasted for over an hour. Kataeb Party MP Sami Gemayel and Future bloc lawmaker Jamal Jarrah were the only March 14 MPs who took part in the discussion.
Speaking during a news conference held before the end of the session, Jarrah outlined the reasons that prompted the March 14 coalition to boycott the session. He said members of the Joint Committees received figures related to the wage hike requested by security forces as part of the salary scale only Tuesday. He added that these figures had not been examined by a parliamentary subcommittee headed by MP George Adwan which studied other salary scale items.
“We received the demands made by security forces just today. No one discussed them with us or gave us the exact cost,” Jarrah said. “This issue should be referred to the subcommittee headed by colleague George Adwan so that it can be discussed with the Finance Ministry and security institutions.”
Also, Jarrah said the salary scale could not be put to a vote independent of the draft 2015 budget submitted to Cabinet by Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil.
He said the revenues stated in the draft 2015 budget were the same ones specified in the salary scale draft law as a means to finance the wage hike, and thus required both draft laws to be studied and approved together.
Jarrah said that on behalf of his Future bloc, he called on Kanaan to adjourn the session and to ask the Cabinet to refer the 2015 draft budget to Parliament for endorsement.
“We are not the ones linking the [approval] of the salary scale to the draft budget, the Finance Ministry already linked the two when it included the new revenues in the submitted budget,” Jarrah said.
The lawmaker stressed that according to Article 39 of Parliament’s bylaws, only the speaker or the deputy speaker could chair a session for Parliament’s joint committees.
“Considering it a continuation of a session which convened back in Oct. 13, 2014 is unhealthy, particularly because there are figures put for discussion of which we know nothing about,” Jarrah said.
But Berri maintained that the session was a continuation of a previous meeting chaired by Deputy-Speaker Farid Makari on Oct. 13 of last year. Since Makari is currently abroad, Berri tasked Kanaan, the session’s rapporteur, to chair it.
Should March 14 MPs continue their boycott of upcoming sessions, it is unlikely that quorum will be achieved when the bill is referred to Parliament’s General Assembly for final endorsement.
Speaking after the session, Kanaan said that members of the Joint Committees discussed the salary raise for security forces, adding that they agreed that the Joint Committees, rather than any parliamentary subcommittee, was the appropriate side to discuss the matter and refer it to Parliament for final endorsement.
Kanaan announced that the joint committees would keep meeting until all issues in the salary scale were resolved.
A member of Michel Aoun’s Change and Reform bloc, Kanaan said that according to Parliament’s bylaws, Tuesday’s session could be considered a continuation of the Oct. 13 session.
Kanaan is opposed to linking the salary scale to the 2015 draft budget. “I am not against its [the draft budget’s] endorsement, but we should not make the salary scale a hostage of ... the draft budget,” Kanaan said.
He added that major obstacles prevented linking the draft 2015 budget to the salary scale.
“Finalizing the draft budget is in need of so many sessions whether in Cabinet, Parliament’s Finance and Budget Committee or Parliament’s General Assembly,” Kanaan said.
Khalil, who also attended Tuesday’s session, told reporters as he walked out that the ministry had been “technically ready for months” to approve the wage hike bill.
MP Ali Fayyad, from Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, echoed Kanaan, saying that the matters of budget and wage hike should not be seen as interdependent. “We should not tie the people’s rights and interests to political disputes,” Fayyad said.
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