Following a coordination meeting held on Tuesday by Christian schools at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Beirut, the Secretary General of Catholic schools, Father Youssef Nasr, spoke to This is Beirut on the matter.
A coordination meeting between representatives of Catholic, Evangelical and Orthodox schools was held on Tuesday afternoon at the Greek-Orthodox Archdiocese of Beirut, in the presence of Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab.
This initiative follows Parliament’s approval on December 15 of two laws amending certain regulations governing private schools. The latter strongly opposed this initiative, declaring an open strike on December 21.
At the end of the meeting, Father Youssef Nasr, Secretary General of Catholic Schools, told This is Beirut that “the hasty legislation (of December 15) has created many problems,” and that there were “many obstacles to its application.”
In this context, the Secretary stated that “the necessary amendments to these laws will have to be made to make them applicable,” an observation reported in the communiqué issued by the Archdiocese at the end of the meeting.
According to him, “these obstacles include the paradoxes between certain laws and others and the absence of an enforcement mechanism.”
Father Nasr gave the example of law 1515, which “prohibits private schools from charging tuition or paying salaries in dollars, while the law approved by Parliament imposes deductions on the financial aid allocated to teachers in dollars.”
In his view, this subsidy is an exceptional measure of a transitional nature and could not be subject to deductions. He put forward the same argument concerning the compensation fund for private school teachers, an institution that is obliged to make its monetary exchanges solely in Lebanese pounds. This reasoning proves precarious when one realizes that the State has already made an extraordinary provision in this regard, giving citizens the option of paying their bills in dollars.
“We support the fact that the law aims to do justice to pensioners, but it will be necessary to discuss, around a table of dialogue, the modalities of application of this law in order to avoid further increasing the financial burden of parents or interfering with the status of other teachers, such as contractual.”
As a reminder, the amendments approved by the House require contract teachers to make a compulsory contribution to the Compensation Fund, through the deduction of a percentage of their monthly salary, an obligation that previously applied only to full-time teachers. As a result of the latest change, this contribution has risen from 6% to 8%.
Regarding the collaboration with Bou Saab, Father Nasr affirmed that the Deputy Speaker “listened to the schools who expressed their views on the legal loopholes” posed by the laws passed on December 15.
“The dialogue was serious,” he continued, adding that Bou Saab “showed understanding and participated actively in the debate, taking note of the various points raised.” In this context, the General Secretary insisted on the need to “follow up this dialogue as soon as possible, in order to find solutions that do justice to both retired teachers, schools and parents, before the end of the school vacations.”
In conclusion, he stated that the Union of Private Schools will not go back on strike until practical solutions have been implemented.”
