UN relief agency strike shuts down Gaza Strip schools
Children sent home on first day of lessons as workers protest classrooms packed with up to 50 pupils
A strike on Monday by workers at the United Nations organization for Palestinian refugees shut down schools across the Gaza Strip on the first day of the school year there, keeping hundreds of thousands of children at home.
Staff at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees were protesting financial problems within the organization. Key issues are overcrowding in classrooms that sometimes squeeze as many as 50 pupils into one room and unpaid vacation days, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported.
Teaching staff are demanding that the number of students per classroom be brought down to a maximum of 38.
Protests were planned for five locations in the coastal enclave including UNRWA’s Gaza City headquarters, where 13,000 employees were to hold a sit-in.
The leader of the UNRWA workers’ union blamed managers for the labor dispute.
“We didn’t want to suspend classes, but the administration of UNRWA pushed us to take that step,” Raafat Hamdouna said.
A meeting with UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl on Sunday failed to resolve the complaints.
Further protests are planned for Thursday in the West Bank.
UNRWA, which operates many schools for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, had threatened to delay the start of school year because of its $101 million deficit. However, a recent cash influx of some $80 million in contributions enabled it to try and meet the schedule by opening on Monday.
While the Gazan UNRWA schoolchildren enjoyed another day of summer vacation, 700,000 children in the West Bank went back to school.
According to figures from the Palestinian Education Ministry, a total of 1.2 million children were supposed to start school this year, of whom 700,000 are in the West Bank and 500,000 in the Gaza Strip.