BEIRUT: A delegation from the Union Coordination Committee is set to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri next week to press their demands for Parliament’s approval of the public sector salary scale bill, Education Minister Elias Bou Saab said Friday.
Bou Saab made the announcement after meeting Berri at his Ain al-Tineh residence. In addition to the salary scale bill for the public sector, Bou Saab said he also discussed with Berri outstanding matters relating to the state-run Lebanese University, including the issue of the Tripoli branch of the LU’s faculty of Economics and Business that has been closed for more than a month after being shaken by protests.
The speaker has set next Wednesday at 2 p.m. for a meeting with the UCC to discuss the salary scale issue, Bou Saab said. He added that Berri had expressed his full readiness to listen to the committee’s demands and he would act accordingly.
Bou Saab and a UCC delegation met Wednesday with Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail, seeking the premier’s support for the wage hike bill.
The UCC, which represents public and private school teachers and civil servants, has staged street protests and strikes in the past three years to press their demands for a salary increase.
Last year, teachers refused to mark official exams to pressure the legislature into endorsing the salary hike. But Bou Saab responded by handing out passing certificates to all students who sat the exams.
Referring to the ongoing dispute over the appointment of a new director of the LU’s Tripoli branch that has kept the location closed for more than a month, Bou Saab said: “Everyone knows that students have been in the street for 32 days and their faculty in Tripoli has been closed. This is abnormal and we cannot continue in this way.”
Bou Saab, who is loyal to Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, said he had heard from the FPM chief that an agreement to settle the dispute over the LU’s Tripoli branch had been reached.
Protesters, mainly drawn from civil society groups and rival Sunni political parties, including supporters of the Future Movement and former Prime Minister Najib Mikati, opposed a decision by LU President Adnan Sayyed Hussein to appoint a non-Sunni as director of the Tripoli branch.
The Future Movement viewed Sayyed Hussein’s appointment of Christian Professor Antoine Tannous as the final straw in what they view as ongoing sectarian discrimination in the appointment of directors. Tannous is close to MP Sleiman Frangieh’s Marada Movement. In light of the protests, Sayyed Hussien suspended the appointment and tasked the dean of the faculty with managing the branch.
No comments:
Post a Comment