Engineers are “overwhelmed” and the pension system is threatened

The number of engineers affiliated with the Union of Engineers in Beirut now reaches 60,000. The increase in number without any study, monitoring or prioritization regarding the specializations that the labor market needs. The result was that the engineers “overwhelmed” Lebanon’s needs and investments, until its ratio to the population stood at around 1.5 per thousand citizens, one of the highest in the world, in contrast to the desertification of the geography of professional work. As the economic downturn in the Arab world, especially in the Gulf states, has led to the replacement of Lebanese engineering skills with lower-paid Asian ones.

Thus, the engineering sector suffered great losses and was subject to intense competition, in addition to legislation that exempted citizens from obtaining construction permits, once under the title of repatriation of the displaced, and another with cheapness of the municipalities or under the name “restoration”, which led to the reduction of the engineering work doors licensed by the union according to current Laws.
Therefore, the union and its engineers face professional, financial and economic challenges. The purchasing power of the national currency has eroded and the banking crisis was reflected in the savings and investments of the Union, with negative repercussions on the pension fund and the social and hospital benefits of the engineers.
At the same time, the group of retired engineers has grown to exceed the number of these three thousand, or about 10% of resident workers. If we take into account that the number of engineers has increased dramatically since the mid-eighties, this means that the number of retirees will double, starting in 2026, destabilizing the pension system, if this is not remedied studying the regulation and determination of the retirement age and salary to preserve the interests of all the joint engineers who contributed to feeding the fund. Retirement and its financing.
Among the challenges, too, is the creation of restricted audit offices for a new control and auditing body (Decree No. 7964 modifying Decree No. 14293) in which the private sector overlaps with the union and the official, and creates a kind of new monopoly engineering office. The building license has become the object of a cycle of multidisciplinary supervision, control and intervention, from the engineer to the union, the prosecution, the supreme urban planning council and the technical urban planning offices in the governorates, districts and municipalities, that increases the economic burdens and imposes on the engineer and the owner a bureaucratic cycle that exhausts time, money and investment, highlighting that It is possible for these companies to remain within the union with the need for a number of employees and skills to complete transactions and technical supervision and legal, or to modify the terms of their establishment in a way that preserves their level of supervision and expands the range of engineers who can establish them. It is also possible to create a fund to invest and manage funds and not leave it in the hands of the captain or the union council, so as not to fall into the traps of wrong and wrong decisions inadvertently due to lack of competence and lack of experience.
Although the objective of creating branches for the Union in the governorates and employing engineers and administrators was to reduce the burden on engineers in terms of transportation and relocation to the headquarters in Beirut. But -in fact- this has negatively affected the union and its expenses due to the lack of powers to carry out transactions without a fundamental justification to these branches, which turned them into collection centers for transactions with the cost of salaries and additional expenses. Therefore, these offices are given powers under the title of decentralization of administrative and technical work or are canceled to account for expenses, while the works are supposed to establish a special banking system under the title of ” Engineering “for young engineers, with interests equal to those that the Union takes from the banks, which facilitates the opening of offices for engineers. Or building small and medium production systems, and it saves them borrowing from banks at high interest rates. Likewise, an electoral system based on proportional representation should be adopted to expand the participation of engineers and different points of view in the protection and development of the union. Engineers should also create a scientific research body that encourages them to undertake research work to further their profession.
The responsibility to protect and strengthen the union and preserve the rights of workers, retired or deceased members is an individual and collective cooperative responsibility, far from partisan, sectarian or regional alignments.
Given that political action cannot be separated from union work due to its complementarity and the multiplicity of points of intersection at the level of legislation and official decisions, such as decrees, laws and administrative and municipal memoranda, what is required is that political action be union work tax and support for the strengthening of its structure and rights, not that of union elections as a registry. For political purposes neglecting daily and sustainable union action.
Therefore, the elections are expected to be a bridge to install and build a “professional, scientific and national social union”.

* Head of the Department of Architecture of the Lebanese University
Head of the research team of the Higher Institute of Doctorate

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