The governmental employees union takes the government to court

Monday July 30, 2007 14:10 by Ameen Abu Wardeh - IMEMC News

The Palestinian governmental employees union decided on Monday to take the Palestinian government and Palestinian banks to court because of government failure to deliver the employees' salaries according to the agreed-upon timetable.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian PM

In addition, the court action was prompted by the government decision of not allowing banks to channel funds from donor countries to go through the banks to get to employees.

Magad Abu Raed, the director of the employees union, said that due to the delay in delivering the salaries, the percentage of interest which employees owe to the banks due to taking loans to survive was doubled. That figure is reaching 50 percent of the employees' salaries, leaving 65,000 governmental employees unable to pay their debts that accumulated to the banks during the past one year and a half.

The Palestinian Authority was unable to pay its employees their salaries since the beginning of 2006 due to the economic embargo that was led by the United States of America when Hamas took office after that year's democratic election.

Abu Raed said that the union is waiting to receive the overdue salaries for employees to be fully covered by the government by the beginning of August.

nablus | internal unrest | news report ghassanb at imemc dot org