Ramallah – With broad participation from ministries, non-ministerial agencies, and civil society representatives, the Civil Society Team to Enhance Public Budget Transparency organized a session to discuss a draft report on the Palestinian civil service law focusing on establishing a fairer salary scale and allowances. The report presents a realistic diagnosis of the public sector salary scale in the current civil service law and proposes recommendations to address existing imbalances.
The report is part of the civil society team’s contribution to the ongoing reform process, which focuses on institutional, administrative, and financial reforms to provide better services to citizens and enhance their resilience in the face of the Israeli genocidal machine. The report proposes a diagnosis of the vertical gaps in the salary scale, identifying disparities in the salaries of employees across different government institutions. It also analyzes the nature and causes of these disparities between the upper and lower categories, highlighting the total cost of salaries to the public treasury and its percentage of revenues. It further discusses the treasury’s ability to sustain the Palestinian Authority’s financial stability. The report also presents several scenarios, suggesting a model to reform the salary scale, reduce the wage gap and bill, and achieve justice.
Overstaffing and inflated salary bill
The session began with a speech by Hamma Zeidan, Director of Operations at Aman Coalition, who noted that the report highlights several issues related to the salary scale for public sector workers, including a large discrepancy in the allowances. Indeed, the number of employees in the public (civil and security) sector has increased dramatically with the creation of additional public institutions since the establishment of the National Authority, noting that the Ministries of Education and Health employ around 70% of the public servants. Zeidan also noted the inflation of the salary bill, which consumes half of the public budget, a situation that necessitates interventions and recommendations to reform the management of public funds.
Legal Framework of the Civil Service Law
Researcher and former state chief accountant in the first Palestinian government, Yousef Al-Zemar, reviewed the report, starting with a historical background of the civil service law legislative framework and government reform efforts. He highlighted the law’s timeline and key amendments, indicating their financial impact on the PNA until the enactment of the law in 1998. In a later stage, amendments were introduced to the salaries of certain management officials and directors through presidential decrees and resolutions. Some of the resolutions were implemented through MoUs between the heads of government departments and officials from the General Personnel Council or Ministry of Finance. Al-Zemar also explained that PNA faced difficulties in some institutions due to a lack of previous experience and a holistic vision or plan for international administrative structures. These difficulties burdened the PNA in later years.
The report referred to the 2023 draft civil service law, which provides for several amendments to the salary scale. However, they do not substantially modify the number of bonuses. The draft does not include a salary scale or any proposed schedule of bonuses. Indeed, the salary bill is increasingly inflating, leading to chronic deficit and accumulated debt to banks, thus triggering an increase in 2025 current spending to serve the debt at an estimated value of ILS 380 million. The government needs serious solutions to control the salaries bill by reforming Human Resources management in civil service, including modifying the PNA organizational structure and amending legislative provisions to improve performance and deliver more cost-effective public services.
Two possible reform paths
Zumer summarized the report, which proposes two paths to reform the current situation. The first is a quick reform, by standardizing the nature of work allowance for sector employees working in the same jobs and holding the same qualifications in the ministries, as well as a reform of the salary scale itself, which requires time, effort and decisions taken by the Council of Ministers, which is immune from the political leadership. The report also noted that the salary scale must reflect job classifications, i.e. the differences in responsibilities and qualifications required for each job, as well as social justice, as the ratios must be fair, ensuring that the gaps between different job categories are minimized, while setting a minimum and maximum limit for pensions, taking into account inflation and the cost of living, and ensuring that the salary is not eroded
Allowances under the civil service law
The Civil Service Law and its regulations include several allowances that, together with the basic salary, make up the PNA salary scale, including the nature of work allowance (a percentage of the basic salary), administrative or supervisory allowance, specialization allowance, scarcity allowance, risk allowance, cost of living allowance, and social allowance (wife, children and maintenance).
It is worth noting that the Civil Service Law has authorized the Council of Ministers to issue regulations and allowances in their various forms. Based on these provisions, without any details or limitations, any allowance approved by the Council of Ministers has become mandatory for implementation and cannot be canceled or reduced but rather becomes an acquired right for the employee, and any future amendment must take it into account.
Key Issues and Recommendations
The report raised some issues that it paired with some recommendations. The report referred to the salary scale and the periodic allowance, which have remained static since the adoption of the Civil Service Law in 1998, in addition to the huge number of existing government institutions, which recently reached 83 institutions that receive salaries based on the Civil Service Law, suggesting the possibility of merging them to have a maximum of thirty institutions. The report also attributed the inflation in salaries to the creation of new jobs, as the structure has become inverted and crowded in the higher categories, due to the large number of departments affiliated with ministries in different governorates, as the structural triangle has become inverted, without any actual need, suggesting a complex of government departments in each governorate that is administratively subordinate to the governor, in addition to reviewing the number of employees and what the treasury bore in terms of salaries of new employees, in addition to the salaries of retirees, and referring the excess number to other locations after the restructuring of the Authority's institutions.
The report also recommended developing the legislative system for the civil service sector and strengthening its oversight, due to the existence of more than one law governing civil servants (civil service, diplomatic, judicial, governors, national fund and government institutions with financial and administrative independence), as everyone should be subject to one civil service law, taking into account the special needs of each category, in addition to authorizing other entities to contribute to the provision of education and health services, while keeping supervision, control and guidance in the hands of the central government such as local government bodies, non-profit organizations and the private sector, which will lead to a significant reduction in the number of civil servants, which will lead to a significant reduction in the number of civil servants.
The report also recommended setting a relative weight for each job in government departments, based on which the salary and wage structure is prepared to give the most important and difficult job a higher salary than other jobs, thus ensuring justice among service employees, using the job description to identify and rank the job grades, placing similar jobs in each job grade, and determining the salary range for each job grade.
Various comments
Mr. Jafal Jafal, Director of the Statr State Administrative Audit and Control Bureau commented on the need to review the salary scale from time to time, and to pay attention to the process of preparing the salary scale as a technical step, prepared by expert staff and according to international studies, according to grades and categories. Juffal attributed the feeling of unfairness among some employees regarding certain decisions of the Council of Ministers that granted a category of employees affiliated with unions such as engineers, lawyers, and doctors allowances that materially affected the public treasury accounts. He also attributed the current damage to the fact that the minimum wage has been fixed for several years at the same pace. Moreover, for several years, the salaries have not been adjusted to the increase in the cost of living, which represents a breach of the principles of justice. e.
Mr. Khalil Al-Fari, Human Resources Officer at the High Judicial Council, pointed out that the problem lies specifically in the issue of allowances. He explained that allowances are granted for obtaining an academic degree regardless of the nature of the work itself.
Mr. Hassan Mayas, from the General Authority for Civil Affairs, pointed out that the cost of living allowance was not applied to ensure that the salary was not eroded, as issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, while employees affiliated with unions were more favored than others in receiving allowances than employees who were not affiliated with certain unions.
Some raised more comprehensive proposals, such as the need to address the rents of the buildings of some institutions, the high privileges and allowances of some employees, and the need to radically amend the Civil Service Law in order to reduce the gaps for future generations.
