Lebanon woke up early this week to the waste scene scattered everywhere around the neighborhoods of Beirut and its suburbs in a scene that reminded them of the previous waste crisis that Lebanon experienced that almost caused an environmental disaster.
After the two companies that pledged to collect waste, ‘Ramco’ and ‘City Blue’, stopped operating in Beirut and its suburbs, a Ramco company official announced that this situation is the result of their workers’ strike in protest against the non-payment of their salaries in dollars and the exchange rate crisis of the lira.
The official added that the company was unable to use its Syrian workers to work after the strike carried out by its workers’ of other nationalities, due to the quarantine imposed on 240 Syrian workers after it was proven that more than 130 of them were infected with the Coronavirus.
Castro Abdullah, President of the National Conederation of Trade Unions and Employees in Lebanon, pointed out on his part that the workers of the two companies went on strike to protest the failure of the company to pay their salaries in dollars, in addition to not securing the necessary cleaning methods for them as well as occupational safety conditions.
‘The workers hardly get what they can survive with, and when they went on strike about a month and a half ago, the two companies calculated their salaries at a low exchange rate for the dollar, and not all salaries have been paid since then’, Abdullah said.
According to Abdullah, a number of workers retreated yesterday from the strike, as the percentage of workers who continued their strike was close to 30%.
#Lebanon #Environment #Strike #Wages #FinancialCrisis
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