Palestinian Authority pay cut angers Gaza workers

GAZA — A decision by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to impose pay cuts on its civil servants in the Gaza Strip sparked anger among the employees on Wednesday.

The PA says it has been forced into the move because its budget has been hit by falling foreign aid.

Among hundreds waiting outside a bank in Gaza City to withdraw their salaries was Jawdat Abu Ramadan, who works for a PA-run institute for the disabled and said he found his monthly paycheck of 4,700 shekels ($1,300, 1,200 euros) had been shaved by 1,700 shekels.

After paying his bills he is left with "just 1,000 shekels" for himself and his three dependants until the end of the month, he told AFP.

Announcing the cutback on Tuesday evening, the Palestinian Authority said it would be temporary.

The 70,000 PA employees in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip are in a bizarre position.

In 2007, the Islamic group seized power from the rival Fateh movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and ousted the Fateh-dominated PA.

Its staff lost their posts, but the PA kept them on its payroll nevertheless.

Hamas set up its own parallel administration with 50,000 staff, whose salaries the PA refuses to pay.

Abbas is regularly accused in the Gaza Strip of abandoning its two million Palestinians, who have been battered by succesive wars with Israel and crushing poverty and have been under a rigorous Israeli blockade for 10 years.

The unemployment rate in the coastal territory is among the highest in the world, at 45 per cent.

The wage cuts will have an impact beyond the civil servants themselves, as their purchasing power, Abu Ramadan says, is "the backbone of the Gaza economy".

"It's a premeditated massacre," says Aysha Abu Maghassib, who worked for the Palestinian Authority's police.

A widowed mother of two, she says that after deductions only about 200 shekels is left from this month's wages.

Ammar Al Njjar, 33, demanded that Abbas resign, while Nevin Abu Herbid said she saw "a crisis erupting".

Hamas called the cuts "arbitrary, inhumane and irresponsible".

Economist Omar Shaban says they could be a Fateh tactic to weaken Hamas, its bitter rival, by creating a social crisis in the strip.

But it has led Fateh members from Gaza to leave the party, with the east Gaza membership quitting as a group and individuals from the central and west Gaza districts also resigning.