Lebanese Ministry of Labor’s plan harms lives of Syrian workers and Lebanese employers
Beirut – North-Press Agency
Layal Kharoubi
The Lebanese Ministry of Labor continues to implement its plan to “combat illegal foreign labor” for the second week respectively in various governorates, at a time where it’s subjected to human rights criticisms as the Syrian labor is most damaged category without taking into account its exceptional humanitarian status.
The plan is also surrounded by economic question marks doubting its feasibility to improve employment opportunities for the Lebanese.
North-Press made a tour in some neighborhoods of Beirut that have undergone inspection campaigns, shops closing and fining institutions operated by foreign workers, including Syrians, where one of the bakeries in the neighborhood of Al-Ghubeiri was sealed, after inquiries from the residents of the area it was shown that the bakery was run by a Syrian citizen and 7 others were working there.
The Ministry of Labor closed it down and sent its employees home after warning them to get work permissions, but they were unable to pay the price that was $700.
North-Press spoke to a Syrian worker in “Al-Asaad” neighborhood that is adjacent to Al-Ghubeiri, as he only declared his first name and refused his picture to be published, Ameer explained bitterly how he was forced to empty the shop from his goods two days after a warning he received by members of “one of the security apparatus” to evacuate the shop from the vegetables and fruit he sells, otherwise the security apparatus will seal it and he will lose his goods.
Ameer said: “A security member in civilian clothes came to the vegetable store, which I’ve been running for four months, he warned me to evacuate it as Syrians allowed to work only in the sectors of agriculture, construction, and cleaning, and they cannot run private stores, according to the Lebanese law”.
Ameer also complained about the cost of work permission, that he should be possessing before starting work, saying: “They want us to leave our work to get the permission first, but how can an unemployed person afford the permission”?
Ameer tells the painful situation that besieges Syrian workers in Lebanon on the pretext of allowing the Lebanese to work: “The shops that are shut down, both the Syrian worker and the Lebanese owner were lived on, and everyone is affected”.
The plan and its consequences
The plan which was launched on July 10, resulted in 600 “shop violations”, 49 of which were run by foreign workers, of Syrian majority, were closed down. While the violations of the rest of the institutions and shops were set, as the Director-General of the Ministry of Labor George Eda told North-Press.
As for the course of the plan, Eda said: “We, in the ministry, consider our campaign has succeeded, the general impression that employers and workers had, is that such procedures are a movie-like, but after it’s done, people were sure that what was serious, those who are included in the plan, still come on a daily basis to the ministry to settle the status of their institutions, and we will continue till the end”.
Concerning the exceptions that the ministry had already talked about for the Syrian workers to work in sectors the law does not permit, Eda insisted that “The ministry is studying the needs of all sectors and give work permissions to the Syrians in sectors outside the law in accordance with the needs of the market and the absence of Lebanese demand for jobs granted to them”.
Yet, the meeting of the Industrialists’ Association with the Minister of Labor Kamil Abu Suleiman earlier this week, which will be followed by another meeting next Monday, shows the absence of the economic and social visions of this plan.
Regarding the industrialists premonitions, George Bagdash, the vice-president of the association stated to North-Press: “The timing of the plan in light of the deteriorating economic situation is totally inappropriate, especially there are professions in heavy industries that suffer the scarcity of Lebanese labor such as marble, sewing, and others, where there are no Lebanese workers”.
In the same context, the Minister of Industry Wael Abu Faour has met with a delegation of shoe factory owners on Saturday who told him about a new problem concerning their obligation to organize work permissions for foreign workers which costs them a lot, especially in light of the absence of a specialized Lebanese skilled labor in this field. They said frankly to the minister that the continuation of this procedure will lead to the closure of more institutions, demanding him to intervene with the minister of Labor and other concerned departments to find a solution, according to Al-Joumhouria newspaper.
The World Bank estimates Lebanon’s unemployment rate at 20% of the total labor force, while economists point out to structural faults in the Lebanese non-production-based rentier economy, where 35,000 academic students graduate annually, while the market only provides 5000 job opportunities, thus the category of the unemployed is confined to the learners.