Ramallah – PA deputy premier and education minister Dr. Nasser Al-Dein Al-Shaer has announced that the PA government succeeded Monday in convincing the PA health workers and the judiciary to end strike and to return to work by Tuesday.
According to Shaer an agreement was signed between the PA government and the two crucial sectors to halt the strike for the best of the Palestinian people; but he didn’t reveal details of the agreement.
Shaer chaired the 35th session of the PA council of ministers in behalf of PA premier Ismail Haneyya who is on an Arab and Muslim tour for a week now furthermore affirmed that the agreement will help the PA government in resolving problems of the remaining sectors of the PA.
“The agreement will make it easy for us to amicably solve the problems of other PA sectors and would help us attend to the needs of the PA security apparatuses” he underlined.
For his part Osama Al-Najjar the head of the health workers syndicates confirmed the agreements adding that health workers will suspend their strike once the government disburses the salary of November which he expected to start on Tuesday.
“We expect our salaries of November to be released Tuesday which will lead us to suspend the strike in a joint press conference with representatives of the government” Najjar said.
He added that the PA also agreed to schedule arrears of the workers’ wages starting January next year in addition to paying risk bonuses due to the workers since November last year.
In return Najjar pledged that all 12000 health workers will normally report to jobs in all departments of the ministry once the government disburses their wages for the last month.
A number of PA sectors and public workers including PA public teachers among other crucial sectors went into general strike last September demanding the cash-strapped PA government release their salaries.
The USA led an international economic and political siege on the duly elected PA government and the Palestinian people since March this year in a bid to force Palestinians bow to their dictates and recognize Israel’s occupation of 78% of Palestinian lands.
Qatari government took the initiative a couple of days ago and announced it will shoulder the salaries of the 41000 PA public teachers which was viewed as the fruit of Haneyya’s visit to Doha and meeting with its Emir Sheikh Hamad Al-Thani.
The Qatari Emir assured Haneyya that he will shoulder salaries of the PA health workers if necessity called for that. Currently the EU is shouldering part of the PA health workers’ wages.
