The Minister of Education in the Damascus interim government, Nazir al-Qadri, revealed that there are 23,000 teachers not committed to their designated work centers, according to assessments conducted by the ministerial committees.

Al-Qadri described this situation as an illegal action, according to what he reported to the Syrian news agency (SANA) on Thursday, January 23.

He also stated that the decision to work under the work positioning system has been canceled. He added that this step comes to ensure adherence to the laws and to organize the process in a “sound” manner.

He called on all educational staff to place themselves at the disposal of their original directorates, saying that the application for transfers will be opened soon, allowing those wishing to move to submit their requests, ensuring legal organization and accurate statistics.

What is the work positioning system?

The work positioning system is an organizational mechanism adopted by the Ministry of Education in the previous regime to facilitate the transfer of employees between their job sites in the directorates, according to specific conditions set by the ministry.

The conditions for applying to the system, announced in August 2023, include the wives of military personnel wishing to transfer to their husband’s workplace and humanitarian cases such as the death, discharge, or loss of the husband.

It also includes transferring those recently discharged from military service to the cities where they reside.

Additionally, it covers the health cases of workers, and war-injured individuals with a disability rating of 40% or above, or with a total disability for one family member.

Other conditions include exchanges for the same specialty and unmarried female employees over the age of 45 who have more than five years of service and where there is no vacancy to transfer them.

Protests against employee layoffs

After decisions were issued to lay off excess employees affiliated with various directorates, many of them protested against these decisions.

For his part, Finance Minister Mohammad Abazid stated that the government was surprised that the number of employees registered in public entities is much greater than the actual numbers on the ground.

He added that there are fictitious names of people receiving salaries at home without any actual attendance recorded in their directorates, which resulted in discrepancies in financial records.

Abazid attributed this discrepancy to the previous regime’s policy of nepotism and favoritism.

A number of employees from the Health Directorate in Daraa protested the ministry’s decision to reduce the number of employees to 900 on January 7th.

For his part, the interim minister of health in Syria, Maher al-Sharaa, stated in a press conference attended by Enab Baladi, that there is an excess number of employees needed in the health sector.

He said that the employees include tens of thousands of cleaning workers, thousands of guards, thousands of data entry operators, engineers, non-medical staff, and people without clear field tasks.