Gaza's public sector workers join strikes

Citing employee mistreatment, union announces government services to be shuttered by the end of the week

Joining thousands of other Gazans already on strike, public sector employees on Tuesday announced that government services will be shuttered by the end of the week, threatening to bring the Palestinian enclave to a standstill.

Muhammad Siyam, the head of Gaza’s public employees union told the Palestinian news agency Ma’an that the general strike slated to begin Thursday was to protest the “government’s actions and its disregard for employees’ rights.”

The union called on Gaza’s Finance Ministry to address a partial salary payment, end wage cuts, and provide employees with transportation to the workplace.

Siyam said the action was also a show of solidarity with the thousands of employees at United Nations-run schools, who announced a general strike earlier this week to protest cost-cutting measures taken by the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency to overcome a financial crisis.

Ma’an also reported that Gaza parents on Tuesday joined the strike, bemoaning overcrowded classrooms, and vowed to keep their school-aged children home for the rest of the week.

Staff at the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were protesting financial problems within the organization. Key issues are overcrowding in classrooms, which sometimes squeeze as many as 50 pupils into one room, and unpaid vacation days, Ma’an reported.

Teaching staff are demanding that the number of students per classroom be brought down to a maximum of 38.

UNRWA, which operates many schools for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, had threatened to delay the start of the school year because of its $101 million deficit. A recent cash influx of some $80 million in contributions by donor nations allowed some 200,000 Palestinian schoolchildren from returning to school on Monday.

Meanwhile, several major Gaza hospitals face imminent closure due to an energy crisis that has lasted for months, the Gaza Health Ministry said earlier this week.

A large portion of Gaza’s hospitals and health centers were damaged during last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas, with 17 out of 32 hospitals and 50 out of 97 primary health centers experiencing some kind of damage, according to UN reports.

In addition, the World Health Organization reported a chronic shortage of medical supplies and drugs in Gaza.

Hospital workers also went on strike recently in protest of the government’s failure to pay their salaries. Hamas had paid their wages in the past, but after a unity government was formed with the Palestinian Authority last year, the factions have been quarreling over responsibility for paying the salaries, according to Ma’an.

Stuart Winer and Josefin Dolsten contributed to this report.