Lebanese police. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP archives)
BEIRUT — The Internal Security Forces (ISF) — also known as the Lebanese police — announced in early March that it was launching a recruitment campaign in an attempt to add 800 trainee sergeants and trainee officers to the force, both men and women. Civil service salaries have still not been adjusted to fully compensate for the collapse of the Lebanese pound and public sector workers have been organizing regular protests and strikes to demand fairer wages.
Yet, on Wednesday, March 6, the recruitment campaign began, targeting candidates who applied in 2018 and 2019, passed the medical and written tests, and the sports and physical fitness tests. The campaign was announced on the official website for the Directorate General of Police, www.isf.gov.lb, with the goal to replenish the ranks, severely depleted since 2019.
This announcement follows the recent decision by outgoing Council of Ministers on Feb. 28, 2024, published in the Journal Officiel and comes against a backdrop of record devaluation of the Lebanese pound, which now trades at LL89,500 to the dollar, compared with the LL1,507.5 exchange rate from before the multiple crises that have plagued Lebanon, from corruption to COVID to the devastating port blast.
The depleted lira has led to a significant loss of purchasing power for civil servants, including the security corps, whose salaries, paid in the national currency, have dropped below $100, making poverty a reality for many.
Nearly 6,000 departures and desertions since the crisis
Defections have multiplied, not to mention retirements. "Before the 2019 crisis, the ISF had 30,000 members [law no. 17 on the organization of the Internal Security Forces]. Today, there are only around 24,500, 500 of whom retire every year," according to an informed security source who spoke with L'Orient-Le Jour on condition of anonymity.
Based on reports sent by the Ministry of the Interior to the outgoing government, the Arabic-language news website alqaous.com with a focus on justice affairs wrote that between Oct. 17, 2019 and Dec. 15, 2023, there were 1,107 desertions from the ISF. Since 2017, the website adds, there were 5,338 departures for legal reasons.
The details of the recruitment campaign press release outline that anyone who applied in 2018-2019 can fill in the form available online on the ISF website, from March 8 to March 28. According to the ISF's statement, applicants "must not be over 30 years of age for those with a university degree or its official equivalent on 31/12/2024. They must not be older than 27 for other candidates. They must also be single, divorced without children or widowed without children."
The source mentioned earlier clarified that only candidates who have already applied in 2018 and 2019 are eligible "because the procedure is long and tedious, and it's much quicker to recruit candidates who have already completed the eligibility procedures and tests."
Equal, but little, pay for men and women
The 800 recruits are expected to be chartered to various internal security-related departments of the ISF. As for the women, whose number has yet to be determined, "they will receive the same salary within the institution as their male colleagues," the source claimed.
However, what that salary will be is still unknown as there is no mention of it in the press release.
Another source close to the matter speculated that a new hire at the ISF would receive "a salary equivalent to around $260, after multiplying the basic salary by nine and increasing travel allowances."
In fact, at the same meeting which authorized the recruitment campaign, the outgoing government granted the military, all services included, monthly travel allowances of LL9 million, in addition to a lump-sum allowance of LL12 million (decree 13019). Similarly, the military was granted monthly welfare benefits equivalent to their salary multiplied by nine (decree 13020).
Still, all of this represents a minimal and provisional improvement in their salary conditions, in the absence of a new salary scale likely to revalue civil servants' salaries.
According to alqaous.com, after the recent readjustments granted on Feb. 28, "average monthly salaries for ISF officers vary from the equivalent in Lebanese pounds of $295 for a soldier and a corporal, to $703 for a general." Salaries still well below a livable wage.
