The Civil Society Team for Public Budget Transparency – CSTPBT demands to increase the budget of the
Ministry of Social Development for 2018, to sustain cash assistance program, economic empowerment
program, and to provide protection to marginalized groups.
The CSTPBT sent a letter to the Prime Minister and members of the Palestinian Cabinet emphasizing that
the Government’s austerity and rationalization plan should not affect the assistance programs to
support the poor according to the National Policy Agenda 2017-2022 especially regarding the seventh
national priority, which focuses on social justice and the law for poverty reduction, social protection,
and empowerment of the women.
Ms. Hama Zeidan, Advocacy & Legal Advice Unit Manager at AMAN (Secretariat of the CSTPBT) ,stated
that the CSTPBT has issued a paper containing a number of recommendations to increase the budget of
the Ministry of Social Development, the most important of which is the need to increase the budget to
be coherent with the strategic plan and the size of programs, and that the Ministry of Finance and
Planning increased the development expenditures of the Ministry of Social Development, especially with
the adoption of the development orientation of the Ministry in its strategic plan.
The CSTPBT recommended that the marginalized groups who receive service from the Ministry of Social
Development in the Palestinian society must not be affected, as well as the necessity of activating the
electronic portal for monetary and social assistance, and obligate all parties to commit to them. The
Ministry of Finance and Planning stopped providing the logistical and human resources necessary to
enable researchers in the Ministry of Social Development to visit families and update and verify the data
due to their great impact on the efficiency of the work and rationalizing the expenditure of funds on the
short and long term, and to save such money for social services instead of cash assistance.
Not to mention that the CSTPBT is launching a national campaign to demand the government to
increase the budget allocated to the Ministry of Social Development in 2018.
