Source: AFP, 31-7-2007
GAZA CITY - Hamas said that it has begun paying Palestinian civil servants who were hired after the Hamasians formed their first cabinet more than a year ago.
Yesterday and today, we began paying the salaries of civil servants with private contracts. They number around 2000," said Mohammed al-Madhun, the director of the sacked cabinet of Hamas premier Ismail Haniya.
Madhun told AFP that the people involved were hired after March 2006, when the movement formed a cabinet after routing long-dominant Fatah party in parliamentary elections two months earlier.
He said that some 7,000 members of the Executive Force, Hamas' paramilitary wing that has been acting as a police force since the Islamists restored order in Gaza in a quick takeover on June 15, were paid last week.
Madhun did not say where the money for the salaries came from.
Hamas is boycotted by the European Union (EU), "Israel" and the United States as a (so-called) terror outfit.
"There remains a group of civil servants who have not received their salaries," Madhun said. "At present, they are being tallied and their identities are being verified to be able to pay them during the next week."
He was referring to the hundreds of civil servants in Gaza who did not receive their salaries on July 4, when the Palestinian Authority began paying the first full monthly salaries in 17 months after "Israel" released withheld funds.