Ogero’s headquarters in Beirut. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros)
BEIRUT — The head of Ogero on Thursday threatened to discontinue his state telecom company’s services for banks not cashing out his employees' checks pursuant to Banque du Liban's recent circular stipulating a preferential rate for public sector employees.
Here’s what we know:
• “Our services will stop immediately at banks who do not comply” with BDL’s Circular 161, Imad Kreidieh said in a tweet. He added that his employees deserve to pick up their salaries “with full dignity,” after scenes of chaos at Lebanese banks Thursday morning.
• “There is no private sector without the public one,” the Ogero chairperson added.
• Circular 161, issued last Thursday, allows public sector employees to cash out their Lebanese lira denominated salaries in US dollars at the rate of LL24,000 to the US dollar, or a more preferential rate than the going LL27,000 rate on the parallel market earlier today. In effect, this mechanism gives the employees a slight pay-raise due to the exchange rate differences.
• In his tweet, Kreidieh posted a video showing Lebanese army soldiers crawling into a bank in a bid to receive service. Large crowds gathered outside banks in Lebanon on Thursday, including in Tripoli where banks closed their doors to large lines of state employees demanding their salaries be paid under the mechanism of BDL’s Circular 161.
• BDL on Thursday extended Circular 161, set to end at the end of the month, to last until Jan. 31, 2022.