Conditions Critical In Refugee Camps As Strike Continue

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Outside the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, trash that has accumulated over the past month lies unattended, while schools and health clinics remain shut. The UNRWA workers have been on strike for nearly one month, demanding what they believe has become their right to strike.

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Today, workers of the United Nations Relief and Workers Agency in the West Bank will continue their strike that began on October 14. The area staff workers of UNRWA, who provide most of the daily services to refugee camps throughout the West Bank, are demanding that they are compensated for six-days of missed work during a strike last July. While UNRWA workers are on strike, UNRWA services such as, schools, clinics, trash pick-up, and food distribution have come to a halt.

This issue dates back to July. After the strike the union and the UNRWA administration entered into an agreement that stipulated several issues that awaited negotiation, including a pay raise that would compensate for the depreciated value of the Jordanian Dinar (the currency of the wages) and whether or not the workers would be paid for the strike.

However, despite the fact that the issue of paid strike days was tabled for future discussions, their pay was nevertheless revoked, in what the union characterises as unilateral. “We were surprised when our salaries came at the end of the month and UNRWA (had) deducted three days of salaries. They had taken the decision alone, without negotiating, without returning to the area staff union,” Yacoub Abu Khiran, a member of the area staff union and the Area Finance Officer for Hebron, explained to me while sitting under the strike-tent at the main entrance of Dheisheh Refugee Camp.

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1. UNRWA employee hospitalized after hunger strike

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) – A Palestinian UNRWA employee and member of the union of Arab employees has been hospitalized after health troubles resulting from a hunger strike he announced more than a week ago.

Hussein Masharqa, 50, was evacuated to Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron in the southern West Bank Thursday after eight days on hunger strike protesting UNRWA policies toward Palestinian workers and employees, according to Ahmad Daniel, another member of the union.

"Masharqa was hospitalized on 11 November, and he insisted to go ahead with hunger strike despite the fact that he suffers from blood pressure and heart troubles," Daniel added explaining that despite appeals by family and medics, Masharqa did not end his strike.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=333650

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2. UNRWA Strikes Wreak Havoc In Refugee Camps

Refugee camps across the West Bank have been thrown into crisis by a United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) strike. Schools, health centres, sanitation and food distribution have been suspended for over two weeks as a result of pay disputes between management and ground staff.

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“The students just sit at home now,” says Mahmoud Tohee, popular committee chairman for Al-Amari camp, Ramallah. “The schools are closed completely.” The children have already missed a fortnight, and the streets they play in are filled with trash and sewage, left to fester by UNRWA’s striking labourers. Sick residents are forced to travel elsewhere for treatment now that the health centre has closed.

UNRWA’s ground staff, who also live in the camps, suffer with everyone else. They say they are being exploited by their employers who have effectively frozen their pay while increasing their own salaries. Al-Amari programme director Galeb Hussein feels it is a scandal. “I have been in my job for 20 years and I am paid the same as a labourer. They tell us we are valued but this is not the message we receive. UNRWA is a human rights organisation; we should not be treated like this.”

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The longer the dispute rumbles on, the worse conditions will become for Palestinian refugees, already suffering chronic shortages in food, water and sanitation. Hussein feels that discontent could lead to violence. “If the services stop, people feel threatened and there are problems between factions. If there is no solution there could be an explosion.”

Tensions within UNRWA, one of the longest serving UN agencies in the territories, have never been greater. As the rubbish piles on the street continue to climb and the youth stay on the streets and out of schools, unfed and unoccupied, a fire burns untended.


http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1604