Gaza civil servants rally against sharp cut in salaries

Thousands of government employees, civil servants and former security officers rallied in Gaza city center on Saturday in protest against the decision of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) consensus government to slash 30 percent of their monthly salaries.

Waving large posters of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Palestinian flags, demonstrators chanted slogans against the Palestinian government and called on Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah to quit.

Supporters of and leaders in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah Party organized the rally days after they found a 30-percent cut in their monthly salaries.

It's the first time since Hamas movement's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007 that Fatah activists, most of them former PNA employees, hold such a mass rally against the government.

Aadel Tu'eiman, one of the employees who joined the protest, told Xinhua that the rally was meant to send a message to the PNA government and the Palestinian leadership that civil servants in the besieged Gaza Strip reject the decision directly targeting their living.

"The economic situation in the Gaza Strip is basically bad; rates of poverty and unemployment are high and the decision of reducing 30 percent of our salaries would make it hard for us to survive," said Tu'eima.

"Bills swallow our monthly salaries, mainly electricity and mobiles. Cutting off 30 percent of it, nothing remains for us to feed our children," he said with pain.

In the summer of 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip and ousted the security forces of President Abbas, the latter called on all 70,000 employees, including civil servants and security officers, not to go to work under the rule of Hamas while promising to continue to pay their salaries.

On Tuesday, the government of Hamdallah announced the pay-cut decision without setting a date to rescind it. The government said the decision was made due to a severe fiscal crisis the government is suffering.

Demonstrators also questioned why the cuts only concern employees in Gaza but exclude those in the West Bank, blaming Hamdallah and Abbas for the crisis.

"Instead of supporting us, they cut our salaries," a demonstrator said in anger.

On Saturday night, Abbas called for an emergency meeting for his Fatah Party's Central Committee in Ramallah to discuss the government's decision to cut the salaries of the employees in the Gaza Strip.

"We are in an open-ended protest until President Abbas and his Prime Minister regret their decision and stop cutting our salaries," said Monzer al-Batsh, another government employee who joined Saturday's protest in Gaza city.