HUNDREDS of workers protested on Monday in front of the al-Awda biscuit factory in Deir al-Balah in Gaza in Palestine, after the plant was closed as a result of the power and gas crisis in the area.
Four hundred and fifty workers demonstrated at one of the Gaza Strip’s few remaining large factories, after managers were forced to steadily reduce working hours due to lack of fuel and electricity.
The director of the factory Muhammad Telbani says the crisis started about a month ago when providers stopped supplying the factory with gas as fuel ran out across the Gaza Strip.
He said that his factory needs 45 tons of domestic-use gas per month.
Telbani said, however, ‘we have lately been receiving only eight tons every month,’ even though the factory could still afford to purchase the required fuel.
Additionally, the factory receives only six hours of electricity a day, similar to other parts of the Gaza Strip.
As a result, he said, the factory has been working only four days a month, detrimentally affecting the wages of 450 workers.
The workers have now launched a picket in protest against their inability to earn enough money to feed their families.
Telbani explained that his factory used to produce 40 tons of biscuits a day.
He said: ‘We have contacted the Ministry of Economy, the director of the petroleum corporation and all concerned parties to try and end the crisis, but so far we received no response.’
Before Israel imposed an economic siege of the Gaza Strip, Al-Awda used to export 60 per cent of its products, mostly to the West Bank.
Israel’s ban on both imports and exports, however, has cut this trade off, while ingredients necessary to make the factory’s biscuits are difficult to acquire, because Gaza is under siege by the Israeli occupation.
Fuel shortages have caused daily life in the Gaza Strip to grind to a halt.
Thet crisis has been immeasurably worsened by fierce storms causing flooding, plunging much of Gaza underwater.
The Gaza Strip had been without a functioning power plant since the beginning of November, when the plant ran out of diesel fuel as a result of the tightening of a seven-year-long blockade imposed on the territory by Israel with Egyptian support.
The power station began operating on Sunday after receiving a delivery of diesel that was purchased from Israel by the Palestinian Authority using funds donated by Qatar.
The plant was only reopened in 2012 after it was targeted by an Israeli airstrike in the 2006 assault on the Strip.
• Hamas has officially notified Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of the movement’s decision to join a national unity government with Fatah which will prepare for upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.
Abbas received two phone calls from Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal and from prime minister of the Hamas-run government in Gaza Ismail Haniya.
Hamas requested that the national unity government serve for six months instead of three as agreed in the 2012 Doha Agreement, one of numerous attempts at reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions.
In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections and in the following year, clashes erupted between Fatah and Hamas, leaving Hamas in control of the Strip and Fatah in control of the West Bank.
A united Hamas and Fatah government, together with a new uprising of young Palestinians will greatly strengthen the struggle to end the occupation of Palestine.
