Government plans to sack 24,000 employees over the next 4 years

Tunisian authorities are planning to lay off about 24,000 employees from the public sector in the next four years, through a program it called “voluntary layoffs” as part of a plan to contain the wage bill.

Labor union, which has strong influence among workers, has growing concerns over the government expanding layoffs, after its recent agreement with International Monetary Fund, and calls for other solutions to mitigate budget deficit other than reducing number of employees.

Public employees are estimated to be about 670,000, costing the country’s budget about 20.1 billion dinars (US$6.2 billion), according to current year’s budget numbers, which is about 15% of the country’s gross domestic product, estimated to be about US$46.8 billion, according to World Bank figures for the year 2021.