Casino Board Forms Panel to 'Reassess File of Sacked Employees'

The board of directors of crisis-hit Casino du Liban on Saturday decided to form a committee to reevaluate the file of the 191 contract employees it had recently dismissed, as the touristic facility remained closed for a fifth day due to an open-ended sit-in.

“The casino's administration has formed a committee to reevaluate the file of the sacked employees,” OTV reported in the evening.

LBCI TV meanwhile said the Free Patriotic Movement's representative in the board, George Nakhle, withdrew his resignation “after he was appointed as a member in the committee that will be formed by the casino's administration.”

LBCI also reported that “AMAL Movement's representative Hisham Nasser has retracted his resignation and joined the committee.”

It was not immediately clear whether the laid-off employees were satisfied with the developments.

In this regard, LBCI said “the decision to reopen the casino will be taken after briefing the sacked employees in detail about the board of directors' decisions and the way the files will be studied, in order to avoid any trap."

Nakhle and Nasser had submitted their resignations on Friday evening after the failure of a solution initiative proposed by Labor Minister Sejaan Qazzi.

On Friday, Qazzi proposed launching “15-day negotiations as of Tuesday between the casino's board of directors and the dismissed employees, during which all decisions would be frozen, including the dismissal decision, and the casino would resume its operations.”

The casino's board of directors has argued that majority of the discharged employees were receiving salaries without reporting to work, while the laid-off workers have described the move as “arbitrary.”

Y.R.