A new disavowal of the salary agreement... Houthi fraud and disrespect for employees' rights
English - Saturday 29 July 2023 الساعة 08:54 am
Sana'a, NewsYemen, exclusive:
The terrorist Houthi militia, Iran's arm in Yemen, renounced the agreement to allocate the revenues of the port of Hodeidah in favor of paying the salaries of state employees, in accordance with the 2018 Stockholm Agreement, in light of the continued flow of oil derivatives ships to the port, with an increase of 92%.
The Houthi leader, Mahdi Al-Mashat, shocked public opinion and the employee sector in Sana'a and the neighboring governorates with new media promises to pay employees' salaries without specifying a time limit for the new-old promises.
In a speech marking the inauguration of the new academic year, the leader in Iran's arm said that his group "will work to provide incentives and a salary in the future," and claimed that what he described as an alliance of "aggression prevents its delivery and prevents its payment, by preventing it from exporting oil and gas wealth," ignoring tax revenues. Customs and proceeds from the flow of oil derivatives ships to the port of Hodeidah.
Al-Mashat claimed Saudi Arabia's agreement to pay salaries "whoever it has" before his group refused to do so, considering it "charity for our people's employees," as he put it, before contradicting and claiming again that "the American is the one who insisted on the Saudi to refrain from paying salary bills during the past period.
Al-Mashat disavowed the Stockholm agreement regarding the allocation of the revenues of the port of Hodeidah for the payment of salaries, and his faltering talk about the justifications for not paying the salaries of employees and his escape to an alliance cylinder called "aggression" and then Saudi Arabia and America, disappointed the hopes of more than one million and three hundred thousand Yemeni employees whose salaries have been suspended or cut since September September 2016.
Al-Mashat's confused talk about employee salaries came in the wake of growing protest campaigns among employees and human rights activists, demanding that the Houthi militia pay salaries from tax revenues, customs, fees, various levies, and the price differences of oil derivatives.
Jurists considered Al-Mashat's reluctance and his accusation of Saudi Arabia at one time and America at other times of preventing the payment of employee salaries, as fraud, laughing at the employees and disrespectful to the Yemenis, in light of the increasing suffering of citizens, the worsening living conditions and the widening of poverty and famine.
Houthi exploitation of the revenues of the port of Hodeidah
The United Arab Emirates, at the UN Security Council meeting, held on July 12, called on the Houthi militia to stop exploiting the revenues of the port of Hodeidah in favor of financing its war effort.
The UAE's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Muhammad Abu Shihab, said that the revenues of the port of Hodeidah should be directed to the benefit of the delayed salaries of employees in Yemen in accordance with the Stockholm Agreement signed between the parties to the conflict in December 2018, instead of using it as a war effort.
Increasing the flow of oil derivatives ships to the port of Hodeidah by 92%
Until last June, the port of Hodeidah (western Yemen) received 51 ships carrying nearly two million tons of oil derivatives on board during the first half of this year 2023, an increase of 26 ships and the amount of one million and 300 thousand tons compared to the corresponding period of last year 2022.
The volume of oil derivatives (petroleum, diesel, diesel) arriving at the port of Hodeidah increased from 193,180 tons during the first half of the year 2021 to 581,614 tons during the corresponding period of the year 2022, to rise during the corresponding period of the current year 2023 to 1,899,557 tons, an increase of 1,317,614 tons for the year 2022, and an increase of 1,760,377 tons for the year 2021.
The flow of oil derivatives increased during the first half of the current year 2023 by 69% compared to the corresponding period of the year 2022, and by an increase of 92% over the corresponding period of the year 2021, and the number of oil derivatives ships arriving to unload their cargo at the port of Hodeidah increased during the first half of the current year 2023. By 50% over the corresponding period of 2022, and by an increase of 78% over the corresponding period of 2021.
The Houthi militia calculates customs fees of 1,030 riyals for every 20 liters of gasoline, in addition to 210 riyals under the name of the oil company's commission, and 240 riyals as internal transportation fees, in addition to an amount of 440 riyals under the name of station agents' commissions.
Violating the terms of the Stockholm Agreement by looting the revenues of the port of Hodeidah
An annual report of the Special Expert Group on Yemen confirmed in February 2023 that the Houthi group would continue to collect revenues of hundreds of billions in the areas under its control, at a time when it was demanding payment of the salaries of employees from the revenues of oil exported from the liberated areas, and the report indicated that these revenues were not used to pay the salaries of employees. government, in violation of the provisions of the Stockholm Agreement.
The report said that oil imports through the port of Hodeidah increased in the wake of the armistice, and during the period between April 1-November 30, 2022, 69 oil tankers arrived at the port of Hodeidah carrying 1,810,498 tons of oil derivatives, compared to 585,069 tons of oil derivatives imported on On board 30 ships between January-December 2021 .
According to the report, the increase in the volume of oil imports resulted in the Houthis collecting tax revenues amounting to 271.935 billion Yemeni riyals, stressing that they did not use these revenues to pay the salaries of government employees, in violation of the provisions of the Stockholm Agreement.
Scandalous numbers and data
The figures provided by the report of the Committee of Experts expose the group's demands and its bidding on employee salaries in the areas under its control.
According to the report, the group
collected about 271 billion riyals in tax on the quantities of fuel arriving at the port of Hodeidah in only 8 months, or about 33 billion riyals per month.
Returning to the 2014 budget, the section on salaries and wages amounted to 977 billion riyals, divided between 435 billion army and security salaries, and 542 billion civil sector salaries, or about 45 billion riyals per month.
With the exclusion of civil servants in the liberated areas, the salaries of civil servants in Houthi-controlled areas range between 25-30 billion as a maximum, which is less than the number that the Houthi group receives from a single resource, which is the taxes of oil derivatives ships in the port of Hodeidah, which reveals the extent of lying and bidding practiced by it. This group is under the heading of salaries.
