Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati appears to be all out of options. Between thousands of public sector workers on strike for better pay and economists that warn of the dangers of a new wage scale, the billionaire Lebanese prime minister once again finds himself walking a fine line. On the one hand, public servants are fed up with low wages and endless promises of better pay. Exacerbating the situation, last year’s minimum wage increase for the private sector coincided with increased inflation that drove prices higher for everyone. According to the Central Administration of Statistics, the consumer price index increased 10.1 percent in 2012, compared to 3.1 and 4.6 percent in 2011 and 2010, respectively. This means our wallets don’t buy as much as they used to. But the public sector employees, teachers most prominently, have been asking for better pay since long before the recent bout of inflation. Their
Ben is a Beirut based investigative journalist. He served as Executive's resident data geek from 2013 to 2014, and as managing editor from 2014 to 2015.
