CEO forgoes salary to pay staff amid government shutdown

The CEO of a cybersecurity company in northern Virginia that depends on government contracts to pay its workers is giving up his salary to make ends meet for his staff during the ongoing partial government shutdown.

“Great people are hard to come by,” Moe Jafari, who is the chief executive of Human Touch, told a local CBS affiliate on Monday. “We don’t want to lose them.”

{mosads}Jafari’s company, which works with the Department of Defense and helps secure the country’s infrastructure, reportedly has almost 20 federal contracts and more than 200 contracted staffers. 

Jafari told the local station that a tenth of his staff risk not receiving pay due to the ongoing partial government shutdown, which entered its 25^th day on Tuesday. 

“I am foregoing my entire salary during this time period,” Jafari told the station. “It affects a lot of people’s lives, and that was the right thing to do.” 

Jafari added that several other executives working at his company also volunteered to donate a day’s worth of pay on a weekly basis to help pay other employees until the longest shutdown in history ends.

“I don’t want the pat on the back. I don’t want any of that. That’s not the point. Again, this is something that we’re doing because it means a lot to us,” he continued.