A hearing session for Rafah Municipality on the municipality's performance
Gaza, Publication and Information Unit
On the morning of Monday 24 November 2014 the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution organised a hearing session for Rafah Municipality entitled "The municipality and the citizen: reality and aspiration", with the participation of the mayor of Rafah, Mr. Subhi Abu Radwan, and Eng. Osama Abu Nqeira, head of the municipality's emergency committee, attended by dozens of citizens, neighbourhood committees and local and international organisations.
The session included a presentation covering the municipality's performance during and after the last war on the Gaza Strip, the emergency plan the municipality carried out to meet such circumstances, a comparison of the level of expenditure and revenue before, during and after the war, and the nature of the services provided, followed by the opening of discussion and questions to those present.
The mayor of Rafah, Subhi Abu Radwan, stressed that the deteriorating economic conditions following the tightening of the siege and the last war on the Strip have deprived the city of Rafah of a package of infrastructure development projects that had been included in Rafah Municipality's strategic plan.
Abu Radwan presented a detailed comparison of the municipality's revenues over the previous two years, explaining that revenues fell by 46% over the two years, and showing that the proportion of those meeting their sanitation bills does not exceed 5%, which has worsened the municipality's financial crisis and its inability to pay its staff's salaries and to carry out new development projects.
The head of Rafah Municipality's emergency team, Osama Abu Nqeira, spoke about the emergency plan during the war and during storms, stressing the municipality's determination to involve all the bodies concerned within the emergency team so as to make it easier to provide services to citizens quickly.
Raed Saada, coordinator of the social accountability project, said this session strengthens transparency and dialogue between citizens and decision-makers in local bodies, and is one of the tools of social accountability that fall within the activities of the project "Strengthening social accountability mechanisms in Rafah Municipality", which the Centre carries out with funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and with support from the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).
