Gaza evacuees protest salary failures
Former Gush Katif settlers say they have yet to receive promised salaries while attending conversion courses for other professions; staff at Employment Service refuses to speak to demonstrators
Dozens of former Gush Katif settlers, studying at a special training center for evacuees, protested Sunday at the offices of the Employment Service Office in Ashkelon against the failure to transfer their salaries in recent months and against the cancellation of professional training courses which they were supposed to take.
The former head of the Regional Gaza Council, Eran Sternberg, also claimed that the wages evacuees will receive in the future will be taken from the compensation moneys they are receiving.
'We were all affluent in the past.' Former settlers demonstrating (Photo: Tsafrir Avayov)
Sternberg and his friends are furious at the staff of the Employment Office, who refused to leave the building and talk with them.
"We are announcing that we won't continue to arrive at these courses until they sit with us and clarify the whole matter with us," said Sternberg.
Among the evacuees camped outside of the offices are mainly academics and farmers, who were promised conversion courses for other professions.
Neve Dekalim evacuee Debby Rosen, who was a spokeswoman to the foreign media on behalf of the evacuees, attended one of the courses.
'I simply can't find work'
"We are all a group of people who were affluent in the past, some of who managed projects worth millions of dollars. We are not lazy unemployed types. We were promised a solution for every settler and a minimum wage, and we were placed in a course which did not allow us to look other work. But in the meantime the days have passed and we have received NIS 279 (USD 59) a month, and from this we are supposed to live on. It's not clear when we will receive the additional payment; we are simply asking to continue our lives and live with honor," said Rosen.
Yair Tzahi, who was evacuated from the settlement of Gadid, is a qualified computer programmer who has managed agricultural projects in the past.
He and his partner studied in the course for the past three months, and did not receive their salary. "We were given promises and told that this course would advance us. In reality, the course itself is not advancing, and we are not seeing the money. We are living in a huge overdraft and it's not clear what the future will hold," he said.
Tzahi said he lost hundreds of thousands of shekels because some of his products were lost due to lack of marketing before the disengagement. "I'm 50 already and I simply can't find work," he said.
The Employment Service did not give a response. The Disengagement Authority said that the matter did not fall under their responsibility.
