Ammon News - AMMONNEWS The UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Sunday denied claims by a Hamas official that it is planning to relocate its Gaza offices to Amman, Jordan.

"UNRWA began to reduce its presence in the Gaza Strip in line with its plans to move offices from Gaza to Amman, Jordan,” head of Hamas' refugee department Issam Udwan said Sunday during a sit-in strike outside UNRWA offices in Gaza City.

"UNRWA claims there has been a budget deficit, while over the past few months the agency has received some $200 million of extra aid from several countries,” Udwan said in a statement.

UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman in Gaza Adnan Abu Hasnah dubbed the claims completely "baseless," saying the UN agency is operating as normal and new employees have even been hired in some departments.

The refugee agency's commissioner general Filippo Grandi “realizes how important it is for the agency to have offices in the Gaza Strip at all levels, including human and political,” Abu Hasna told Ma'an.

Udwan also claimed that UNRWA had not started the reconstruction of homes demolished in Rafah during Israel's war on the coastal enclave in 2008.

In July 2011, UNRWA revealed that the organization was facing severe shortages in construction materials needed for ongoing projects in the Gaza Strip.

"We have been allowed to take in to Gaza a tiny fraction of the construction materials needed," UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also released figures which showed only a small number of the 40,000 housing units needed to meet natural population growth and the destruction of homes in Israeli military operations were being built.

OCHA said that Israeli restrictions on importing building materials ensured that the pace of reconstruction would be slow.


* Ma’an