Head of the Government of National Unity, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, confirmed that the salaries of employees of oversight bodies, represented by the Audit Bureau and the Administrative Control Authority, would be suspended pending their inclusion in the unified salary schedule, against the backdrop of the protests that have taken place across the country in recent days.
It is worth noting that the salary law project was initiated by the Audit Bureau in 2015 in an attempt to address the significant disparity in income levels and establish unified standards for salaries and benefits across various sectors of the state.
The Bureau’s proposal at the time was based on a number of principles, most notably:
- Linking pay to work and performance by adopting performance assessment forms that would allow entitlements to be tied to actual achievements.
- Reducing disparities in salary levels and achieving greater equality among employees with similar qualifications, experience, job nature, and responsibilities.
- Raising the minimum wage, which stood at LYD 450 at the time, while improving the overall level of salaries. It was estimated that around 95% of state employees would benefit from the proposed framework.
- Reviewing the high salaries of certain groups and entities, including diplomatic missions, judicial bodies, and oversight agencies, with the aim of narrowing the gap between income levels.
The Audit Bureau’s Proposal
- Linking positions to approved organizational structures and staffing plans, allowing for the treatment of disguised unemployment and administrative absenteeism.
- Taking into account the capacity of the Libyan economy and the state’s resources when determining the level of spending on salaries, on the basis that reforming the salary system cannot be separated from the state’s financial stability.
The data on which the project was based at the time indicated that salary disparities among the entities surveyed through the National Identification Number system as of September 2015 exceeded LYD 5,000, while the proposal aimed to reduce these disparities to more comparable levels.
The Proposal
The project also included practical examples of redistributing income levels, including raising the proposed minimum salary for holders of intermediate education qualifications from LYD 600 to LYD 1,389, while setting an upper limit of LYD 2,167.
In 2015, the Audit Bureau began work on a new draft law to reorganize the salaries of employees within the state’s administrative apparatus, in an attempt to address the significant disparity in income levels and establish unified standards for salaries and benefits across the various sectors of the state.
