BEIRUT: Around 100 Palestinian refugees held a sit-in in front of the UNRWA headquarters in Bir Hassan Wednesday, demanding for the fourth time this month an improvement in health and social services in the refugee camps across the country.
On the same day, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) issued a press release announcing the launch of a program aiming at “improving the accessibility of patients to the care needed and reducing the financial burden on Palestinian patients.”
“This is a regular sit-in of Palestinian refugees in front of UNRWA main office to protest against the shortage and decrease of UNRWA services of relief, health and education,” said Mashour Abdel-Halim, a Hamas official.
“We demand that UNRWA play its role because it’s responsible for the relief of the Palestinian people,” Abdel-Halim added.
Protesters waved Palestinian flags and held placards that read “People want to live in dignity” and “People demand the provision of medical treatment and medication.”
Several ill children and elderly people sat in wheelchairs in front of the gate as some protesters banged on the main gate, calling for UNRWA director Salvatore Lombardo to meet them.
“We’re asking the director to come here so he can hear the complaints of children and their mothers,” said Abed Moqdah, the general coordinator of the Palestinian Popular Committees, which organized the sit-in.
He said the group had recently handed a memorandum to Lombardo, requesting more assistance for the Palestinian community.
He described UNRWA’s recent announcement of an increase of the average tertiary health care services’ coverage from 30 to 40 percent as “not being enough.”
“Disregarding this problem is going to lead to a social explosion in the Palestinian community,” he warned.
“Basic services, that’s all we want,” said 41 year-old Amal, who preferred not to give her last name, and who came from the Ain al-Hilweh camp, near the southern city of Sidon.
“We came here to ask for our rights, the right of Palestinians to have treatment, medicine, health services and coverage for it,” added Hiam Ashwah, 21, who came from Bourj al-Barajneh camp, in south Beirut.
According to UNRWA, 95 percent of Palestinian refugees do not have health insurance.
“Our rights and demands are not being met,” said Pascale, a 33-year-old woman from Ain al-Hilweh, who also preferred not to give her last name.
“We’re asked to pay half of the bill for health care and in the end, all they give us is aspirin,” she explained, adding that she felt Palestinians in Syria lived “better than Syrians” in Syria.
“In Lebanon it’s not the same, we don’t have rights … our children are studying in schools, they graduate, but they’re not allowed to work,” she said.
Later Wednesday, UNRWA announced a new program entitled CARE (Catastrophic Ailment Relief Program), which the organization was able to implement after receiving additional funding, the press release said.
The program aims to benefit “all Palestinian patients whose condition is classified as catastrophic” and who require long and expensive treatment, such as for cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases.