Aid for Workers Affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic in Palestine

- The State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB) conducted an audit examination of the Program to Support and Assist Workers Affected by the State of Emergency / Phase One, which was implemented through the Palestinian Ministry of Labor.

- The number of names that applied to the Program to Support and Assist Workers Affected as a result of the declaration of the state of emergency reached 276,930 applicants, and the number of beneficiaries of the program reached 40,456 beneficiaries..!, representing 15% of applicants, and the total monetary value of the aforementioned program amounted to 28,319,200 shekel.

- The number of beneficiaries of the program in the southern governorates was (5,533) beneficiaries, and I calculated the percentage which was (less than 2%).! The entire task was entrusted to the General Union of Palestinian Workers' Unions, without disclosure of the selection criteria..! The role of the Ministry of Labor was limited to disbursing to beneficiaries from the southern governorates, without conducting checks to verify their entitlement to benefit from the aforementioned program, and the Bureau was unable to express an opinion regarding these beneficiaries due to the lack of necessary data to carry out the examination and comparison represented by civil registry data, company data and commercial registry, and professional unions' data, in addition to non-disclosure of disbursement criteria in the southern governorates...!

- The Ministry of Labor disbursed aid to beneficiaries according to specific criteria...... based on the data submitted by beneficiaries via forms for surveying workers affected, and verifying the accuracy of applicants' data, according to the available review criteria and bases (the available review).!!..... which led to disbursing aid to those undeserving of it...!. The audit procedures carried out by the Bureau, in cooperation with the Ministry of Labor, and at its request, produced the following results:

- According to civil registry data: financial aid was disbursed to both husband and wife, their total number being 244 beneficiaries..which contradicts the adopted criterion regarding spouses which stated "in the case of registering both husband and wife, priority is given to disbursement to the wife if the criteria apply to both spouses," which led to the disbursement of aid to (122 beneficiaries) in violation of the adopted criteria..!

- Financial aid was also disbursed to beneficiaries who are two years old.!.and disbursements were also made to nine beneficiaries whose ages exceeded (65) years...!

- It was noted that financial aid was disbursed to three beneficiaries who hold diplomatic passports (according to civil registry data)...!

- No criteria were set regarding the number of beneficiaries from a single family, which led to disbursing financial aid to six individuals from the same family in some cases..!

- According to income tax data, financial aid was disbursed to a number of cases that do not comply with the disbursement criteria.!..... illustrated in the body of the report, including: beneficiaries working in non-profit associations and institutions, beneficiaries working in some non-governmental hospitals and some medical service companies, pharmaceutical companies, beneficiaries working in some Palestinian universities, in addition to disbursements to beneficiaries working in some electricity companies, some of whose salaries exceeded 11,000 shekel, and other beneficiaries working in some banks operating in the Palestinian territories, some of whose salaries exceeded 16,000 shekel...etc...among the many other cases that violate the criteria...!

- According to data from the General Administration of Crossings and Borders and the Ministry of Interior, they reported that financial aid was disbursed to 217 beneficiaries whose return to the homeland could not be verified by the Bureau according to official records, and it was later verified by the Ministry of Labor that 206 of them had returned...........! ...and the Bureau continues to record keeping this matter under attention...!

·      Available unions' data..:

- Based on the available unions' data, financial aid was disbursed to 126 beneficiaries affiliated with the Bar Association, and to 16 beneficiaries affiliated with the Pharmacists' Association, and disbursements to three doctors.!

- Improvements to the criteria: by studying the criteria adopted for selecting beneficiaries of the Program to Support and Assist Workers Affected by the Declaration of the State of Emergency, the following became apparent:

- The criteria for the sectors (industry, quarries and agriculture) required that the beneficiary have a certain number of children, whereas the criteria for the sectors (construction, health, trade, spinning and weaving and transport) did not require the beneficiary to have children.

- The criteria for the tourism and hotels sectors, kindergartens, registrants from the camps and Jerusalem and transactions in the education sector required taking all registrants in these sectors, with the condition that the beneficiary's social status be (widowed or divorced or married) in the education sector / while that was not required for the other mentioned sectors.

- The Ministry of Labor adopted the criterion that the beneficiary must be a worker in the local market or a job seeker, without having an effective possibility to verify the application of the criterion..!

·      Ongoing risks:

- Weakness of data related to the southern governorates, in addition to the fact that not all professional unions' data were covered, and some unions (the Physicians' Association, the Engineers' Association) refused to cooperate with the Bureau.! Also, not all local bodies were covered. As for work permits for Palestinian workers working in the interior, there are no data available about them at the Ministry of Labor...!

· Injustice and oppression ...clear weakness, lack of seriousness and diligence...in managing such humanitarian operations....and failure to define the contours of responsibilities in performance.. We hope the Ministry of Labor lights a candle...in this pitch darkness, by having returned the funds from those undeserving to the public treasury...and that others took lessons from such...failure in work.....and failure in hope...!

· Date: 29/8/2021