From her small home office and on her computer screen, content creator Sally Abu Maree opens up to the world, working with international companies, where remote working platforms such as Freelancer.com, Upwork and “Khamsat” have provided her. opportunities for freelance jobs that provide external financial returns In hard currency, after the salaries of Lebanese companies became “unappetizing for content creators”, due to the economic crisis.
There are no official numbers for “remote” workers in Lebanon. As for the programming industry alone, it employs around 22,000 Lebanese and revenues are at best $ 4,000 a month, according to digital development expert Ramez Al-Qara, which means the entry of millions.
I am the lady of my time
Remote work platforms are the best that the Crown crisis has produced. With this sentence, the content creator Sally Abu Maree expresses to “Al-Modon”, the importance of these platforms in the life of remote workers in Lebanon, since “they have helped us to engage in the field of work and have provided us with a comfortable income, and it has benefited us, our surroundings and our society “.
Compared to traditional work, he tells how “these platforms have allowed us to invest in our time without spending it with our income, unlike a normal job that requires expensive transport”, and they have also provided us “by balancing our time between family and work “, as we are” our own masters “. The times and the workplace, “which creates for us a sense of comfort in the workplace, away from the pressure of being in the office, in addition to the contribution of these platforms for multi-task productivity or productivity in more than one job at the same time.
Other functionalities provided by remote working platforms, such as working relationships with clients outside of them. But the financial component was the most important with the dollar crisis in Lebanon. In context, Sally feels “secure”, with “fair” and “dollar” income.
The “global” search for the dollar
The orientation of Lebanese youth to self-employment cannot be separated from its global orientation. Young people in the digital age are moving away from fixed work, unlike previous generations who depended on it mainly as a source of income, according to coach and university professor Munawar Muhammad in his interview with Al-Modon, taking into account that ” the factors that accelerated this trend in Lebanon, in particular The economic crisis of 2019, since any external income has become a reliable amount compared to the collapse of the local currency “, especially with” the greed of employers who value their assets in dollars and pay their employee salaries in pounds ”.
And the dominance of global digital economies today.Every young person who has a laptop, internet, and job-related skills available remotely can use these sites to earn a basic income, says Mohammed, stressing the importance of remote work platforms. in the professional launch of young people, as I am a “broker” who insures them with clients, and companies, without paying them, are different from any freelance business they may have to spend on before they can make a profit.
In this context, Muhammad focuses on three levels for the benefit of the users of these platforms: young people, at the beginning of their careers, may encounter difficulties at the level of winning projects due to the lack of relationships, and here lies the importance of self-employment platforms, which save them the trouble of looking for clients, are present in one place and all they have to do is contact them and agree before starting to work.
The second level is the payment guarantee, which is carried out through these sites, where the two parties reach a consensual agreement between the customer and the service provider.
The third level. Opens channels from Lebanon to the world These sites are “communities of their own” and play a promising role for those interested in self-employment, building relationships and taking them off the platform in case trust and credibility are established between the client and the freelance, to carry out work projects at a later time without the need for an intermediary between them.
22 thousand free customers
In turn, digital development expert Ramez Al-Qarra links the Lebanese trend towards self-employment in early 2020, particularly after the crisis of confiscation of funds in banks, which has pushed employees by a large number of technology companies specializing in programming and engineering in particular, to move to remote work platforms, especially with the decline in investments and the closure of several foreign companies.
22,000 people in Lebanon, who declare the nature of their programming work “at a distance” according to the LinkedIn platform, with a value of per capita profits that can reach 4 thousand dollars a month at best. Revenues from these businesses are in the millions of dollars when we consider that they all depend on self-employment as a basic income. We have not yet calculated the profits of remote workers in other sectors such as translation and the content industry, which could double the amount, and are reliable amounts for the development of Lebanese free work!
Towards the “remote” legalization of people’s work
However, the development of the self-employment sector in Lebanon, without which there are basic challenges listed by the readers, as the poor quality of the Internet causes the loss of great opportunities in this field.
The Lebanese banking infrastructure also makes it difficult to deal with global digital banks that are being adopted by remote business platforms, such as “Pioneer” and “Paypal”, as Lebanese tend to receive their work via “Western Union” or open accounts. digital out of Lebanon through friends, which makes the capture mechanism difficult.
This is in addition to the legal aspect, as there is no legal “individual” capacity for free remote work in Lebanon. Self-employment for Lebanese is not limited to remote work platforms, but there are activities for individuals with companies abroad.
Al-Qarra provides an example of how to allow people to set up individual companies in Ukraine, which, when applied in Lebanon, makes many international companies excited to work with Lebanese people who have acquired “legal status” and grants these people such rights as social security, while the continued non-legalization of “freelance work” for individuals with offshore companies, means missing out on opportunities and dollar revenue.
The need to develop the sector
The fact is that the support to the sector does not require “colossal steps” from the state, the creation of institutes for the development of self-employment in Lebanon and training in modern technology is enough, and the partnership of the Lebanese state with partners specialized in digital. training such as coursera or udemy can facilitate this.
Al-Qarra concludes his speech, emphasizing that the field of digital transformation is “much broader than we can imagine”. entry ”, or as a call center expert, and receive new dollars!
