A Palestinian counts his salary outside Arab Bank of west bank city Ramallah, July 4, 2007. (Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery >>>
GAZA, July 4 (Xinhua) -- The Ramallah-based
Palestinian emergency government of Sallam Fayyad began on Wednesday paying
wages to tens of thousands of civil and security servants through banks.
Thousands of employees stood in queues in front of
ATM money machines of different banks in Gaza and the West Bank to take out the
salary for June after Fayyad announced the payoff Wednesday.
Fayyad decided to pay the full-time civil and
security employees after Israel transferred 118 million U.S. dollars of the
frozen tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority last week.
However, his emergency government excluded 19,000
employees that were hired by the former Hamas-led government.
"I'm very glad that I received a full salary today,"
said Ahmed Ghannam, a 46-year-old employee from Gaza, adding that "We hope that
this would continue and we would be able to get regular and full salaries every
month."
Other employees were disappointed when they checked
ATM money machines in Gaza City and found no salary.
"I don't know what to do now. This is not fair to pay
some people and exclude others, we have enough suffering and enough poverty. Our
leadership should find an immediate solution," said Hammam Sa'eed.
It is the first time that employees receive a full
monthly salary since the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) won in the January
2006 legislative elections and formed its first ever government, which drew
nothing but boycott from the world.
The estimated 170,000 employees of the Palestinian
Authority have received only partial salaries since March 2006, owing to Israeli
and Western economic boycotts slapped on successive administrations led by
Hamas, considered a terror outfit by Israel and the West.
World donors and Israel imposed embargoes on the
Hamas government formed in April last year and the national unity government
which was set up thanks to the Mecca agreement reached between Hamas and its
rival Fatah in February.
The boycott was eased after President Abbas sacked
the Hamas-led government following the Islamists' bloody Gaza takeover and
installed an emergency cabinet headed by internationally respected economist
Salam Fayyad.
The Hamas movement in Gaza accused the government of
Fayyad of carrying out political discrimination by barring thousands of people
from getting their salaries only because they are affiliated with Hamas.
Ashraf el-Ajrami, a minister in Fayyad's government,
justified the exclusion of part-time employees as saying "this act was an
attempt to reorganize the system and the law of civil service."
"Within the last year and a half, many jobs had been
offered to employees that their employment conditions contradict with the
Palestinian law of public services," said al-Ajrami.
"All what we are going to do is to re-evaluate the
situation and end the administrative chaos that dominated the institutions of
the Palestinian Authority," said al-Ajrami.
Meanwhile, Ahmed Yousef, an advisor for the sacked
Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haneya, said that the Fayyad government's
decision to exclude 19,000 employees "would double the suffering that the
Palestinians people have."
"The money of taxes revenues given by Israel is the
right of every Palestinian. It was given to the Palestinian Authority in order
to pay the salaries of every Palestinian civil or security servant regardless of
their affiliations."
Yousef, however, said that "the national unity government of Hamas movement would exert every possible effort in order to pay the salaries of those were not able to receive it today."
Palestinians wait in line at a cash machine outside a bank in Gaza City July 4, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery >>>
Palestinians wait in line inside a bank in Gaza City July 4, 2007.(Xinhua/Reuters Photo) Photo Gallery >>>
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