The deterioration of the situation comes against the impact of the ferment of the Lebanese street, with the rise in the exchange rate of the dollar to more than 30,000 Lebanese pounds, which is a record number in the history of Lebanon.
The minimum wage in the country is 675,000 Lebanese pounds, and it was equal to about 450 US dollars, but now it does not exceed 20 US dollars.
Suha (mother of five children) told “Sky News Arabia”: “We have not tasted meat and chicken for months, and we have only tasted humiliation and death.”
The young Nidal, who works as a freelancer, said, “I cannot get a million pounds a month just to support myself.”
As the eighty man, Abu Samer, confirms, in an interview with “Sky News Arabia”: “My monthly pension is 950,000 pounds, and the electricity subscription for the private generator costs me 1.5 million pounds, equivalent to 50 dollars, and you ask me how to live? We are closer to death and not Someone asks us who are responsible.”
The head of a family in the city of Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, says: “The living situation is bad and my pension is 700,000 pounds. How will it suffice me? May God give us justice from them.”
For her part, Mona Al-Yaser says: “Enough is enough for us, we ask for salvation from them, all of them are corrupt, and most of the people are silent. We are waiting for a bundle of bread to feed our children, our refrigerator is empty of almost everything.”
market disruption
Analyst in economic affairs, Raed Al-Khatib, told Sky News Arabia: “The rapid jumps of the dollar and sharp declines indicate a great imbalance in the market, and this establishes a stage of societal instability, as the poor are getting poorer and the employee in the public and private sectors suffers from the fluctuation of the dollar price and the collapse of the dollar. The value of salaries is tens of times.
Al-Khatib added, “The minimum wage has become no more than $20, and citizens are suffering from a severe shortage of electricity after they dispensed with the electricity subscription, which now costs $80 per month, which is equivalent to the salary of a senior employee.”
And he added: “Most of the people with limited salaries are satisfied with buying only the necessary foodstuffs in order to survive while waiting for relief.”
He continued, “A large number of employees receive a salary of approximately one million pounds as a monthly salary, and they have moved to other auxiliary professions, such as collecting and selling scrap and metals, and securing additional sums that do not exceed 100,000 pounds per day, and this undoubtedly does not establish a social stability process.”
Al-Khatib pointed out that “the currency collapse reached 90 percent in 2021, and with the beginning of 2022 the currency collapsed as well by 15 percent.”
The analyst considered that “the country is facing a rolling disintegration of production institutions and industrial sectors and everything that would lead to a real renaissance in the country.”
He concluded by saying: “It is unfortunate that there are no data explaining this chaos in the money market, and the country is subject to moody criteria in the dollar market, and manipulation of the exchange market is not subject to any scientific and economic criteria.”
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