An outrage on the newly issued Social Security Law

To carry on with their demands had been brought up at 15th Oct demonstration, thousands of Palestinian protesters, mainly workers belong to the private sector, largely gathered in the streets of Ramallah today calling for withdrawing or modifying the items of the Social Security Law.

Some employees lifting up protest signs. Taken by Nasser Al-Qadi

This series of protests and strikes have been consecutively occurring since the enactment of this law in March 2016. Therefore, the protesters threatened that there will be disobedience in the private sector next month in case their demands ended up ignored, which will paralyze it entirely.

Based on this law, 7.2% of employees' monthly salaries will be deducted for investing it in a social security fund. On the other hand, employers will be required to pay about 9% of their employees' salaries into the fund, which makes the employees very concerned that their employers might deduct this amount from their own salaries. Furthermore, the law stipulates that both spouses are required to pay into the fund, but only the husband's income is to be received; as well as, widows can't inherit their deceased husbands' pensions and orphans can't receive their parents' pensions at the end of the university. This means that these amounts of money will be saved up in the fund without being spent by the owners in the future, which raises the protesters' suspicion with the question, "Where will these pensions be spent eventually?"

A general scene of the demonstration. Taken by Nasser Al-Qadi

Criticisms hovered over this law due to the inadequacy of issuing it, as it was done unilaterally in closed channels away from a unanimous decision by all workers and labor unions.