The affair of salaries at the Tunisian Company of Refining Industries (STIR) makes a lot of noise, and not only with the public opinion, but in the corridors of more than one ministry, and even within the STIR.
Indeed, a few days ago, the CEO of the company saw bursting into his office unions and agents who were aware of the reality of things, complaining that their wives would resent them for hiding the reality of their financial situations.
They had, like many others, believed the figures of the company’s salaries, as “unveiled” by the observatory “Rakaba” on the evolution of salaries between 2010 and 2021 (ar), and where they heard of an average salary of TND 6,000 DT for employees of this public company.
The thing was all the more incredible that this public company which is the STIR, has been for several years in financial situation much more difficult to the point of being recently the subject of an inter-ministerial meeting.
– STIR, a public utility company!
Information taken from the source; we learn that the STIR employed last year 538 employees. That number is down compared to the 605 employees in 2019. A decrease that is explained by retirements in a company where the average age is 47 years. Important note, the payroll of the company was 39.2 million dinars in 2021. That sum represented only 0.5% of total expenses of the company which recorded that year a turnover of TND 4.9 billion and received a state subsidy of over TND 260 million.
Reacting to the revelations of “Marsad”, the STIR which itself was blindsided by the astonishment and concern of the Kasbah, issued a statement where it clarifies that the figure of TND 1.856 billion cited by “Rakaba” represents the total premiums of additional compensation due to STIR and not its losses for the period 2017-2021. The company, as we know, works on behalf of the state that makes up each year the difference between its import prices, its production costs, and therefore makes no margin on its sales.
– Salaries rising sharply
That we speak of loss, it does not fall under the sense because the STIR has become more a “public utility company” than an industrial or commercial enterprise, because it is the only supplier of the country in fuels of all kinds, the refiner, and the only importer of petroleum products that are also highly subsidized by the Tunisian State (We will return in more detail).
In its statement, the STIR specifies that the monthly salary, gross because including the tax and the social contributions as well as other expenses as those of the training, did not exceed, last year, the TND 4.514.
And it would be enough to be an employer to know that in net, it is rather a sum which would exceed only of some tens the three thousand TND per month.
It should also be noted that this remuneration has increased and not only by a little, as indicated in our last table. And all this is paid by a state that would not be able to cover these charges by the successive increases in prices at the pump. Those Increases are still struggling to cover the real price of manufacturing fuels.
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