UNRWA employees at home and abroad went on strike today Monday due to the lack of response by the UN agency’s management to their just demands.
The strike took place after the failure of negotiations between the agency’s staff union and the UNRWA administration regarding protecting its employees’ rights opening the door for employment and improving services provided for refugees — which have been curtailed in recent years.
The strike included UNRWA schools and centers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and in the Palestinian camps in Jordan Lebanon and Syria.
According to the UNRWA staff union in the West Bank the strike is aimed at discouraging UNRWA from its decision to grant exceptional leave without pay to all its employees and also to encourage it to retroactively pay each worker the annual bonus no later than next January reconsider the employment policy and retain the provident fund and end-of-service compensation.
The union has accused the UN agency of managing its financial deficit at the expense of its employees.
The schools and institutions of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip seemed deserted as the strike paralyzed all the sectors supervised by the agency.
UNRWA supervises the education of more than 290000 refugee students in the Gaza Strip and provides vocational and technical training opportunities to approximately 1000 students annually.
In the health sector UNRWA provides medical care to the vast majority of Palestine refugees in Gaza who number over 1.25 million.
