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Claims
CH7 the payroll opening, and the provenance of the ghost-employee figure
Status
READ_IN_PART
Version history
The register keeps changing after the book is fixed in print. Each entry below was added to this row in the order shown.
GATE ITEM A1, SECOND DOCUMENT, AND IT ESTABLISHES THE CHANNEL RATHER THAN THE COUNT. THE FIGURE HERE IS 400,000 OF 1.3 MILLION AND THERE IS NO 900,000 IN IT: the minister is reported saying that 400,000 of 1.3 million government employees were 'أسماء وهمية', fictitious names. The 900,000 attenders figure is in SRC-281 and SRC-280, not here, so an attender count taken from this document would be this project's own subtraction and would have to be labelled. THE CHANNEL IS REUTERS, NOT SANA: the report says the minister spoke in an interview with Reuters published that Friday, 31 January, and that Reuters interviewed four ministers besides the finance minister. SRC-281 has the same minister giving the same figures to SANA. TWO OCCASIONS, TWO CHANNELS, AND THE REUTERS ORIGINAL IS NOT YET HELD; that route is named and untried. AL-SAKAF IS HERE TOO AND IN HIS OWN WORDS: the state will need only between 550,000 and 600,000 employees, 'أي أقل من نصف العدد الحالي', that is, LESS THAN HALF THE CURRENT NUMBER. The earlier book and Chapter 7 v1 both write 'well under half', which is a strengthening of the minister's own comparative; 600,000 of 1.3 million is 46.2 per cent. CONTEXT AVAILABLE AND NOT YET USED: a public-sector employee database was to be built by electronic questionnaire within six months by a team of fifty; personnel records were held in sixty rooms of paper files described as dating to the Ottoman period; the digitisation specialist at the Ministry of Labour is named as Hiba Baalbaki.
READING OF 16 OCTOBER 2026 (article 7, audits/reports/article07_review_2026-10-16/REGISTER_PASS.md): THE REUTERS ORIGINAL IS NOW HELD, research/PART7_RECHECK_2026-10-16/reuters_2025-01-31_wayback_20250217032136.html (Internet Archive capture of the Reuters page, datePublished 2025-01-31). It reads: 'Only 900,000 of 1.3 million people on the government payroll actually come to work, Abazeed said, citing a preliminary review. ‘This means there are 400,000 ghost names’'; and of al-Sakaf: 'the state would need between 550,000 and 600,000 workers - less than half the current number'. THE 900,000 / 400,000 SPLIT IS IN THE JANUARY INTERVIEW. Chapter 7 l.3 ('the same figures arrived in the form that has travelled ever since' on 28 March) and the CH07-PAYROLL title are put to the author. The route above called untried is closed.
D-304/D-307 series corrections (07), 18 October 2026: READING OF 18 OCTOBER 2026 (Chapter 7 v54 l.3, D-304 item 1): the Reuters report is now its own row (SRC-787), and Chapter 7 l.3 cites it directly, with the D-256 form ('I read the Reuters report itself on 16 October 2026, after this book's closing date'). This row's Arabic text, opened again today, carries the 400,000 of 1.3 million and no 900,000, as it says; l.3 says only that Enab Baladi carried the interview the same day. The 900,000 / 400,000 split is the January interview's; the March report repeats it.
LABEL LIFTED 18 October 2026 (closing pass 2, D-315; unit CL2-D): the reading is dated on or before the closing date of 18 October 2026 (D-315 item 1), so the prose keeps the reading date and drops 'after this book's closing date' (LABELS.md class A). Chapter 7 v57 l.3 (via SRC-787).