Why Lebanon’s drivers can’t be legal

It is quite common, amid Lebanon’s current chaos, for cars without number-plates to breeze through the traffic and be waved through checkpoints with nobody batting an eyelid. Last year nearly all the employees of the country’s car-registration office were arrested on charges of corruption. Some 60 workers there are said to remain behind bars. The interior ministry admits that since October the entire department, known as the Nafaa after the area of Beirut where it is located, has been shut down. So the number of numberless cars cruising the roads has been rising.The problem is that a ban in place since 2017 means that all public-sector hiring has been frozen, so the errant registrars cannot be replaced. In any case, few Lebanese people can survive on a standard public-sector salary of around $50 a month. The police are being trained to take over the role, but it could take them an age to get rid of the backlog.