BEIRUT (LEBANON) – Nadim Srour depended on savings as a backing for his return like many Lebanese expatriates. The deposits have crumbled in the economic crisis in addition to the destruction caused to his home by Beirut blast.
The 43-year-old returned from the Gulf with his wife and two sons in September 2019, and says, “Our lives turned 180 degrees,” said. A month after Lebanon’s banking system was drastically hit, “Now we are ruined.”
Its 1975-1990 civil war has imposed a public debt to rebuild after trying to lure savers with high interest rates. However, it had led to most of the cash laundering amid mismanagement and corruption.
Srour had left the United Arab Emirates after a slump in construction there and now figures among Lebanon’s increasing ranks of jobless. He said, “We have money and they will not give it to us. We are being driven like sheep.”
Though a charity provided help to Srour to find a Beirut flat for his family, his elderly parents and brother have moved to the mountains, which has become a place of refuge in Lebanon’s troubled times.
Banks have constraints regarding the amount savers can withdraw. “Now we stand in line outside the bank and hope we get a turn,” Srour said.
Srour’s father Maurice have rebuilt his savings before after a 1980s currency crisis. Despite having money in the bank, his family can only derive the equivalent of only $1,000 a month.
Maurice Srour said, “Even if I want to use it to fix my house, the bank won’t give it to me.”
The central bank has called for Lebanese banks to offer interest-free, dollar loans so that it would come to the aid of those making repairs. That said, borrowing at any rate does not prove to be a help for those without salaries.
“I don’t want a loan. I want my money,” said Samir Sfeir, a 75-year-old retiree with injuries on his arms from the port blast.
He has been able to withdraw only $700 a month from the bank and has relied on his friends to help rebuild his home.
Joe Nader, a 48-year-old bank employee and property owner, has been reworking on a furnished apartment building for his 13 tenants. However, he is struggling to find the dollars suppliers demand.
For some, like Srour, this incident has reinforced of why they had left abroad to work in the past. And he’d leave Lebanon again, if given a chance, “If we could, we would do so tonight.”
