Employees of the Rafic Hariri Governmental Hospital in Beirut held a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Health in Beirut on Thursday to demand that they be paid their outstanding dues. In their final statement issued during the sit-in, the employees threatened to escalate, assuring that "their movement will continue until there is a fair solution that grants employees their rights according to the mechanisms in force, to prevent the institution from further paralysis."

Bassam Akoum, who spoke on behalf of the protesters, demanded that "the dues of those employees who held out during the war despite the difficult economic conditions the country is going through be paid." The war between Israel and Hezbollah, which intensified between September and November 2024, has not spared the capital. Lebanon has been in the grip of an acute economic and financial crisis since 2019.

The spokesperson demanded that "the decrees be implemented," accusing the Ministry of Health of "seeking to humiliate employees and destroy the hospital that was on the front line during the Covid-19 pandemic" between 2020 and 2022.

"The management of the establishment today threatened to dismiss employees who refuse to go to work," stated Akoum, calling on the caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati "to intervene personally to prevent this systematic destruction of the hospital."

Another protester, Abdellatif Issa, accused "the Beirut MPs and Beirut associations of not having mobilized to save the hospital, although the rights of the employees are preserved by a decree which grants them 200 billion pounds, and which would have solved the problem if it had been applied."

The protesters distributed a statement after their sit-in, explaining that "the strike has never been an end in itself for them, but a means of pressure to obtain their rights when they find themselves in an impasse."

They believe that "the ministry must do everything possible to enforce the decrees and reward the staff for their efforts during crises."

They accuse the supervising ministry of "marginalizing the hospital" and "remaining deaf to their warnings about violations of the law committed there," without providing further details on these practices.