Algeria : workers' party leader, Industry minister locked in bitter wrangle in Parliament

The leader of the workers' party Louiza Hanoun and the industry and investment promotion Minister Abdelhamid Temmar have been involved in a bitter verbal dispute during a parliamentary session of the National Popular Assembly.

Louiza Hanoun vehemently accused Hamid Temmar of carrying out a policy highly detrimental to the survival of public enterprises through an all-out privatisation drive aimed, she argued, at stifling the national public sector.

She said that the ongoing unbridled privatization policy pursued by Hamid Temmar would trigger the lost of  thousands of jobs at a time when the unemployment rate is rampant and the citizens’ purchasing power is going downhill by leads and bounds.

The Minister sought to substantiate his arguments that the public sector was still healthy despite some failings contained in the current investment promotion law adopted by the government to boost private investments and employment opportunities.

The 2 protagonists traded figures and assertions for a long time before the salutary intervention of the speaker of the National Popular Assembly Abdellaziz  Ziari who put an end to the bitter wrangle between them.