Uniforms of Lebanese Civil Defense members. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Parliament's Finance and Budget Committee has promised a temporary solution to address the pending payment of 2,100 Civil Defense employees' salaries.
Those affected haven't received their wages since August, 2023, when over two thousand Civil Defense volunteers were formally employed. It was a major expansion in the General Directorate of Civil Defense's paid workforce. According to a September 2022 survey by the Civil Service Board, the general directorate had 589 paid staff.
Since then, however, a legal issue has prevented the transfer of their salaries: The Cabinet hasn't decided whether to consider the new employees among the security forces or among public employees, who get different benefits.
To solve the issue, Parliament's Finance and Budget Committee recommended an urgent advance payment of these unpaid salaries on Thursday, listed as an "urgent advance payment," until their status is formally decided.
In a press conference, the committee's chair, MP Ibrahim Kanaan, announced the decision, saying that the employees will get their delayed salaries while the legal issue gets resolved.
Kanaan said that the 2024 budget allows such an advance payment to take place and a source at the Finance Ministry confirmed this. Kanaan told L'Orient Today that the decision does not need to be approved by Cabinet, as the Finance Ministry has the jurisdiction to approve and implement the payments itself.
The payment still has to be approved by the Finance Ministry before it can come into force.
A few hours before the decision, a Civil Defense spokesperson told L'Orient Today that at this point in time, the Civil Defense does not have a preference in terms of which sector it wishes to be classified — the workers just want to get their salaries.
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 Cabinet has been in caretaker status since the May 2022 parliamentary elections.