Uniforms of Lebanese Civil Defense members. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT—Over 2,100 Civil Defense volunteers were formally instated as staff at the Interior Ministry this month. They will now gain access to salaries and benefits they have long demanded, and been denied.
They were officially confirmed as Interior Ministry employees by a cabinet decree issued on Aug. 21.
In late June, when the cabinet first agreed to the hires, Civil Defense head Raymond Khattar hailed the move as the culmination of a nine-year struggle to “do justice” to the volunteers, and a promise kept by caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi.
"The state was very late in giving volunteers their rights, so they waited a long time… more than 20 years since the beginning of their work in civil defense,” said Mawlawi during a press conference in early June.
"We owe you so much, so the least we should do is give you your rights," he added.
The finalization of the hires also represents a notable one-time expansion in the ranks of the public sector, most recently estimated at approximately 250,000 people as of late May 2023.
It is a seemingly major expansion in the paid workforce of the General Directorate of Civil Defense. According to a September 2022 survey by the Civil Service Board, the general directorate had 589 paid staff
These volunteers became Interior Ministry staff after 2,124 candidates successfully completed the application process, which ended in June. The application was restricted to volunteers who had accumulated at least three years of service as of April 2014, the date of the civil defense organization law under which applications were authorized.
The formerly unpaid volunteers were approved to join as enlisted personnel and non-commissioned officers in line with the human resources provisions applicable to Internal Security Forces (ISF) personnel at the equivalent rank, an official at the Civil Defense Training Unit told L’Orient Today.
Questions remain
A couple of issues await resolution.
Among these issues are that the 2023 draft budget does not currently include enlarged appropriations for civil defense, despite the expansion of its paid workforce. The benefits structure for these workers also needs clarification.
The staffing decree states that the necessary funds to compensate these volunteers-turned-employees will be secured from “the additional open appropriations in the 2023 budget.” The 2023 draft budget currently allocates LL10 billion ($112,045 at the current parallel market rate) for salaries at the civil defense general directorate, the same lira amount as the 2022 budget.
To give a sense of scale, Thursday’s edition of the Official Gazette contains a LL11.47 billion transfer to Civil Defense, noting that the General Directorate requires LL24.52 billion in order to fund six months of transportation allowances for 454 employees. In other words, six months of transportation allowances for a fraction of the staff is estimated to cost nearly 2.5 times the projected annual budget.
Under the 2017 salary scale, base salaries for enlisted security personnel range from LL982,000 to LL2,104,000 per month while base salaries for non-commissioned officers range from LL1,187,000 to LL2,696,000. These salaries are temporarily multiplied by a factor of six — provided the bonus is at least LL7 million monthly — under a series of compensation adjustments approved by the government.
Their health and retirement benefits are still somewhat unclear. The 2014 law on the organization of the Civil Defense says that some civil defense personnel’s access to benefits and medical treatment is copied over from the regulations in force at the ISF—whereas other employees are considered part of the civilian civil service, which has its own medical and retirement benefits scheme. According to the Civil Defense, these volunteers are in the former grouping, at least for salaries.
A second Civil Defense official told L’Orient Today it’s currently unclear whether the new employees will participate in the civilian benefits scheme, the ISF’s, or a new dedicated scheme, pending a consultative opinion from the Interior Ministry.