Teachers slam Cabinet committee over salaries

The head of the Private Schools Teachers Association slammed the sluggishness of the work of the ministerial sub-committee tasked with looking into new salaries of teachers and civil servants and said it should look to more short-term solutions, in comments published Saturday. “The ministerial committee tasked with reviewing the draft on introducing a new salary scale for the public sector did not specify any date for approving this scale, arguing that it [the committee] needs time to find revenue sources,” Nehme Mahfoud said in comments published by Al-Joumhouria. “While reviewing the scale might take months and the committee is adopting a long term approach, the UCC [Union Coordination Committee] cannot wait and feels that the Cabinet is neglecting its duties,” he added. Mahfoud said that committee was trying to separating the issue of wages of teachers and those of civil servants, which he said his group outright rejects. The UCC announced Friday that it will be organizing escalatory steps as of next week in parallel with the boycotting of marking exams. These steps include waging a general strike at all ministries and state institutions across Lebanon Tuesday and holding a mass rally the following day Wednesday from Barbir Square to the Grand Serail in the capital. In early June Prime Minister Najib Mikati promised teachers to pass a new public sector salary scale that would allow state employees to benefit from a salary raise as enjoyed by private sector workers earlier in the year. For that purpose, the Cabinet agreed to establish a committee which includes the ministers of education, finance, economy, and eight other ministers to discuss mechanisms to implement such a scale. Based on Mikati’s promise, teachers went back on their threat not to proctor grade 9 and grade 12 official exams but said they would not begin correcting the exams until the scale was passed. The teachers, for a while, did correct some of the examinations but last week the UCC went back to boycotting marking exams after their meeting with the ministerial committee did not produce any concrete results. The Daily Star