Gaza: Farming out work

5 May 2009

Oxfam's Mohammed Ali Abu Najela reports from the Gaza Strip.

Finding work in the Gaza Strip has been a constant challenge since the beginning of the blockade in June 2007. With a high unemployment rate and a trickle of goods reaching Gaza, Oxfam and Ma'an Development Center came up with creative ways to rehabilitate roads while creating jobs.

"We set out to repair 44km of agricultural roads. The main criterion for deciding where to work was that the roads served a large number of farmers and also their families. We targeted four areas (Al Zaitoun, Ash Sheikh 'Ijleen, Al Mughraqa and Juhor and Dik) that we knew were very poor and relied heavily on agriculture," says Ala'a Eid, Food and Livelihood Officer with Oxfam in Gaza.

The construction of the roads provided a perfect opportunity to create employment. So Oxfam and Ma'an worked with local committees to find a workforce. But there were certain conditions; the participants would have to be unemployed and responsible for at least six family members. In the end, 930 people were selected to work for 20 half-days.

Changing neighbourhood life
The project was not without its challenges. The lack of fuel, raw materials, time constraints, unfavourable currency exchange rates and the latest Gaza war are just some of the issues that arose during the project. "Because the Gaza Strip has been under the blockade for so long now, very little materials were available to rehabilitate the roads. Had we decided to wait for the raw materials to come from Israel, we would not have been able to build the roads! So, we had to make do with what was already in Gaza, like rubble from destroyed houses. Our contractor simply collected rubble to create a compact and solid base for the roads," explains Ala'a.

Creativity paid off in this case. At the beginning of the rainy season, while most other roads were flooding, farmers were pleased to see that the new roads were holding up and still safe to use. One worker who took part in the project said: "Now that the project is completed, people still commend the quality of the roads we rehabilitated. When it rained a lot recently, my neighbours were still able to use the roads with their cars or carts, which was not the case before. I truly feel proud of my work! I think I made a great contribution to the life of the neighbourhood."

Demanding work
Rehabilitating agricultural roads is hard, physical work. It involves long hours under the sun shovelling, compacting soil and carrying heavy materials. However, just over 26 per cent of the skilled workers and 8 per cent of unskilled workers were women. "This is a success for us," says Ala'a. "It was a serious challenge because of the nature of the work as well as the traditional barriers, where women in those communities are mostly not allowed to do paid work."

The unskilled female workers identified where they could be most useful themselves. "We did not tell them 'this is what you will do," says Elena Qleibo, also a Food and Livelihood Officer for Oxfam. "The women suggested they use their carts and donkeys to transport materials on the site as well as cleaning up. It was very useful work. Skilled women easily found their place as "foremen", nurses for first aid and social workers to help in the house visits we conducted for the baseline survey."

Overall, the project provided 2,420 days of paid work for skilled workers, and another 15,350 for unskilled labourers including 2,000 working days for women.

"Farmers were eagerly waiting for the end of the project so they could use the agricultural roads and reach the markets quicker," recalls Ala'a. "It was also much better to provide cash-for-work instead of handouts. It was dignifying for the workers. However, I would have liked to have people work with us for more than a month, because for most families it was not a sufficient amount of time to secure enough money to cover all their needs."

As a testimony to the success of the project, the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) has recently asked Oxfam and Ma'an Development Center to extend the cash-for-work project to rehabilitate 55km of roads in Rafah.

This project would not have been possible without the financial support of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (DG-ECHO).