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Gaza civil servants' salaries remain unpaid

The Palestinian national reconciliation government is suffering from a deficit that poses a challenge to the payment of the salaries of Gaza's government workers.
A Palestinian employee paid by the Palestinian Authority shows money to the camera after withdrawing cash from an ATM machine outside a bank, in Gaza City June 11, 2014. Gaza's public sector union suspended protests on Wednesday that had paralysed the local economy and threatened the deal on a Palestinian unity government but said it would resume its action if its members were not promptly paid. The pay dispute involving some 40,000 public servants erupted last week shortly after Hamas, which has ruled Gaza
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RAMALLAH, West Bank — The prime minister of the Palestinian national reconciliation government, Rami Hamdallah, declared Oct. 3 that an agreement had been reached with Qatar, in coordination with the United Nations, to secure the transfer of a financial payment before the end of the month to a number of Gaza civil servants under the previous Hamas government. However, Ministry of Finance figures show that the government can't fulfill its financial obligations to these workers on a regular basis, because of its dependency on receiving regular financial aid from donor countries.

The financial arrangement with Qatar of $20 million came after the Fatah-Hamas agreement was signed on Sept. 25 in Cairo. The most prominent of these issues is paying the Gaza government workers’ salaries. In accordance to the Fatah-Hamas agreement, the reconciliation government, which was sworn in on June 2, would administer the affairs of the Gaza Strip.

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