The UN Humanitarian Coordinator Jamie McGoldrick Monday announced the release of $ 1 million from the Humanitarian Fund for the occupied Palestinian territory to prevent the collapse of life-saving services in the besieged Gaza Strip.
According to a press release by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory the allocation will go to the UN-Assisted Emergency Fuel Program which provides emergency fuel mainly for back-up electricity generators at around 250 critical health water and sanitation facilities in the Gaza Strip.
“This allocation is critical to prevent a complete collapse of services and a potential outbreak of disease” said McGoldrick. “Unfortunately it comes in the absence of action from the relevant authorities who have responsibility for the well-being of Gaza’s citizens or predictable donor support” he added.
With daily power outages of up to 20 hours per day approximately 950000 liters of emergency fuel are needed per month to enable life-saving services in the Gaza Strip.
Funds donated for emergency fuel in 2018 have been exhausted and the UN delivered its final stocks on September 5th.
With this allocation at least US$ 2 million in additional support is still needed to cover the bare minimum of health water and sanitation services relying on emergency fuel through the end of 2018.
The emergency fuel funding gap comes against the backdrop of an overall humanitarian funding crisis with record-low support levels in 2018 said the release.
Gaza’s water and sanitation facilities have a near zero stock of emergency fuel while public hospitals currently have only enough fuel to maintain essential services for a few more weeks on average with some facilities facing even greater risks.
Another 42 private and public health facilities have even fewer fuel stocks. Critical facilities have implemented strict mitigation measures to extend as much as possible fuel resources provided to date.
The Municipality of Gaza reports said that due to lack of fuel garbage collection is taking place only once every 5-7 days leaving 40000-50000 tons of trash accumulating on the street posing associated health risks.
“A $1 million allocation will support the delivery of life-saving services for around 1.5 months at critical health water and sanitation services” said McGoldrick. “But additional action is urgently needed to ensure sustainable delivery of emergency fuel. Palestinian families in Gaza should not be deprived of their right to access essential services” he continued.
