PA employees forced into early retirement stage protest in Ramallah

Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture employees hold banners during a demonstration against Palestinian Government’s “obligatory and early retirement of employees” decision in front of the Palestinian Cabinet building in Gaza, West Bank on 12 September, 2017 [Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency]

Palestinian Authority (PA) employees who had been forced into early retirement have staged a protest in front of the head office of the government in Ramallah, Quds Press has reported.

The employees placed tapes over their mouths as a sign of the oppressive measures taken against them.

Sources told Quds Press that several of the employees, who took part in the teachers’ strike in 2016 to put pressure on the government to improve their salaries, were among those forced to retire.

Read: PA plans to retire 7,000 security officers

The employees also called on the government to respect their right to freedom of expression.

The Palestinian government has recently forced a large number of its employees in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into early retirement, mainly from the education and health ministries.

Monitors believed that the grounds of these decisions are political, but the government claimed that this came as a result of recommendations made by professional committees.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.