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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Palestinian Authority pay cut angers Gaza workers | |
| 2017-04-06 | |
[IsraelTimes] PA says falling foreign aid has left it unable to provide full salaries; others see move as attempt to weaken Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, with social crisis.
The PA said it was forced into the move because its budget has been hit by decreasing foreign aid. Among hundreds waiting outside a bank in Gazoo City to withdraw their salaries was Jawdat Abu Ramadan, who works for a PA-run institute for the disabled and said he found his monthly paycheck of NIS 4,700 ($1,300) had been shaved by NIS 1,700 ($465). After paying his bills he is left with "just 1,000 shekels" for himself and his three dependents until the end of the month, he told AFP. Announcing the cutback on Tuesday evening, the Paleostinian Authority said it would be temporary. The 70,000 PA employees in the Hamas-run Gazoo Strip are in a bizarre position. In 2007 the Islamic terror group seized power from the rival Fatah movement of Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... and ousted the Fatah-dominated PA. Its staff lost their posts, but the PA kept them on its payroll nevertheless. Hamas set up its own parallel administration with 50,000 staff, whose salaries the PA refuses to pay. Abbas is regularly accused in the Gazoo Strip of abandoning its two million Paleostinians. The unemployment rate in the coastal territory is among the highest in the world, at 45 percent. The wage cuts will have an impact beyond the civil servants themselves, as their purchasing power, Abu Ramadan said, is "the backbone of the Gazoo economy." "It’s a premeditated massacre," said Aysha Abu Maghassib, who worked for the Paleostinian Authority’s police. A widowed mother of two, she said that after deductions only about NIS 200 is left from this month’s wages. Ammar al-Njjar, 33, demanded that Abbas resign, while Nevin Abu Herbid said she saw "a crisis erupting." Hamas called the cuts "arbitrary, inhumane and irresponsible." Economist Omar Shaban said they could be a Fatah tactic to weaken Hamas, its bitter rival, by creating a social crisis in the Strip. But it has led Fatah members from Gazoo to leave the party, with the east Gazoo membership quitting as a group and individuals from the central and west Gazoo districts also resigning. | |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #3 as the intraRantburg comment notes, these 'civil servants' do no actual work so they are still getting paid for not doing anything "That's IT! We're going on strike! We're not going to report to our no-work jobs!" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2017-04-06 15:22 |
| #2 But the wait times at the PA DMV are going to be Yuuuge! |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2017-04-06 14:26 |
| #1 two things stand out as the intraRantburg comment notes, these 'civil servants' do no actual work so they are still getting paid for not doing anything also, although most people don't realize it, they get paid in Israeli money (NIS)because the Paleos haven't come up with their own currency |
| Posted by: lord garth 2017-04-06 13:51 |