Vice Premier Shimon Peres will initiate legislation during Sunday’s cabinet meeting regarding compensation of roughly a million residents of the north and Haifa for damages incurred due to the war in Lebanon. The issue will be the central focus of this week’s cabinet meeting.
If the initiative is accepted, northern residents will be reimbursed for missed workdays and the closure of businesses, companies and factories. “The State of Israel is obligated to strengthen residents of the north, who are sitting in their shelters in accordance with the orders of the Home Front Command,” said Peres, who heads the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and Galilee.
For the twelfth day in a row, Israelis in the north have been confined to bomb shelters and secured rooms, in keeping with IDF directives. As a result, hundreds of thousands cannot reach their workplaces, and thousands of factories and businesses are not functioning. The financial losses could tally in the billions of shekels. Peres will ask his colleagues in the government to pass urgent legislation in the Knesset on the compensation issue, which will be raised in a special plenum meeting Tuesday.
PMO: Payments can't bankrupt government
Peres will propose that the law be advanced with the mutual agreement of the cabinet, Histadrut workers’ union and employers. On Sunday Peres plans to share with cabinet members the gist of the hundreds of appeals and phone calls to his office by distressed council heads, employers and workers in the north. According to the vice premier, many businesses are in danger of collapsing. Likewise, no solution has yet been found regarding reimbursing workers who cannot work due to the security situation.
Officials at the Prime Minister’s Office told Ynet that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was well aware of the financial crisis of the northern communities. The prime minister appointed the PMO Director General Raanan Dinor to head an inter-ministry team to deal with the issue. The aim is to compensate workers for wages lost on days they were prevented from working. With that, they clarified that the government cannot provide full, sweeping reimbursement for every claim of damages. “
Compensation will be given in the future, after a thorough examination of each and every claim. Civilians will also need to understand that the government can’t be bankrupted,” officials said.
The Finance Ministry said that Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson was establishing a special committee to suggest solutions for the payment of missed wages. Further, the ministry instructed that full wages be paid to government employees in the northern district for July, even if they missed workdays.