Chairman and General Director of Lebanon's Ogero Telecom, Imad M Kreidieh, on Monday, called upon the executive board to call off the strike until Friday on the condition that they meet the needed rights thereof the day after.

However, the latest information indicated that the Ogero Employees Union's strike had not been suspended.

According to our website's information, contacts are being made at the highest levels to end the Ogero strike, and a presidential reference is stepping in to try to resolve it. The minister of telecommunication has also informed those concerned that Beirut would be cut off from the rest of the world within 48 hours.

 “Although I fully support the demands of the personnel of the state-owned telecom Ogero because they are still paid at the dollar rate of 1500 and struggle to get to work, I am dissatisfied with the timing of the strike,” Kreidieh said via Sawt Beirut International and LBCI.

 “We have always stood by the people and other institutions in troubled times. According to the agreement with the minister, Ogero staff are occupying 12 to 13 stations, but I don't think this is adequate,” he added.

¨The Ogero network and its branches must always continue to operate normally for the continuity of work in all sectors are of our responsibility¨ he stated.

“The stations would not have shut down, the service would have continued, and no one would have been impacted by the "Ogero" strike if there had been power from EDL. Anyone working today who prevents a tank from arriving at a station is guilty of a crime. In order to ensure the stations have electricity, we are spending 50 billion lira on fuel oil,” Kreidieh stressed.

He stated that they were taking on greater risks and had a serious problem adding: "hydrocarbons for electricity generation now constitute 56% of the operating budget of Ogero, whereas it was 8% previously."

"The answer is to continue the discussion to find a workable solution and a compromise that provides the Ogero employees the ability to reach their work to serve the public,” he said regarding the workers’ demands.

“At Ogero, we had a profit of $500 million with a profit margin of 70% in 2019, but this year is not going well. Despite the fact that the industry did well from 2017 to 2019,” Kreidieh concluded.