Last Monday, the south began to return to normal after three days of fighting between the IDF and the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Tax Authority Director Eran Yaakov left a closed meeting with the heads of local authorities in the Gaza Strip and declared immediate moves by the state , which will benefit the residents of the south, while promising to activate friendly compensation mechanisms and shorten the bureaucracy.
One of the good news Lieberman brought to the residents who live up to 40 km away from the Strip was that the state would compensate them for the days they spent away from their workplaces due to the frequent shooting and tensions in the area.
But it turns out that there are factories in the south that have not yet received the compensation they were promised following last year’s “Guardian of the Walls” operation. “It’s always like this,” Kobi Fuda, CEO of the Polyron mattress factory in Kibbutz Zikim, told “Calcalist”. , but something is not working smoothly between their judicial systems and the real needs in the field.”
According to him, even though a year and three months have passed since the guard of the walls, he still has not received compensation from the state for the wages he paid to his approximately 100 employees who were absent from work during the 12 days of the operation. “We asked for compensation under the red route, and only about a month ago the tax authority gave us an answer that did not satisfy us. They are willing to pay us less than what we spent. These are the salaries we paid to the employees knowing that the state will return this money to us. Our main consideration was to make it easier for the employees, not to bother them to submit applications Saying goodbye to the National Insurance and putting them in the tangle of bureaucracy,” he said.
Last Sunday most of the business activity in the south was paralyzed due to the fighting. According to the CEO of Polyron, only 17 of the 100 factory workers showed up for work, but this time too he intends to pay the full salary to those who could not come to work due to the shutdown of the education system and the need to watch over their children. “On Monday, after the ceasefire, we had a strong drop in activity. The workers hardly came, and the flagship store in the kibbutz was also empty. This is the reality we have been living in for two decades,” said Poda.
According to him, he still does not have an estimate of the extent of the losses he suffered during the fighting days of the past week, and when it becomes clear he will submit a request to the Tax Authority for compensation: “Everyone understands our plight, but there is always someone on the other side who sits on the counter and says ‘this one doesn’t deserve it’. We want To continue doing industry in the south, 2 km from the border with Gaza, and it’s a shame that the state doesn’t help us with that. There are usually promises, but when you get to the implementation stage, strange and awkward demands come.”
The A.D. Mirez company, which owns two furniture factories in Sderot, is also waiting for compensation from the Guardian of the Walls operation. According to Roni Shahar, the deputy CEO of the company, it is an amount of more than one million shekels for wages paid to employees who did not show up for work during the days of the operation and for the loss of business due to the shutdown of production.
“We are in a never-ending bureaucracy,” said Shahar. “It is impossible to follow the reason why the issue is stuck. My accountant calls the tax authority every day, they tell him that the issue is being handled, but there is no answer. They talk all the time about zero bureaucracy, but in the field there are zero answers. It is sad and above all unfair.”
The Association of Manufacturers estimates that in the southern settlements there are still several dozen factories that have not yet been compensated for the wages they paid to the workers in the previous operation. “In most cases, these are delays that stem from a lack of manpower in the tax authorities. A situation has arisen in which the state borrows from those factories that have become a bank for it,” said the president of the Association of Manufacturers, Ron Tomer. “The business owners paid wages to their employees because they did not imagine leaving them without a salary and put their trust in the fact that the state would return the funds to them. A year and a quarter after the operation and there is still no compensation, this is very unlikely. If the tax authority has a shortage of employees – pay these businesses and take into account with them after that, as she knows how to collect advances from them every year.”
According to the Tax Authority, so far the handling of most of the claims filed against the Wall Guard has been completed: “Out of 10,291 claims for direct damage, there are about 300 claims that are still being processed. These are cases of complex damage such as buildings undergoing comprehensive restoration or reconstruction. In addition, 7,124 claims have been filed for indirect damage, and more than 90% of them have been handled. In most of the claims that have not been processed, we are waiting for data from the businesses to be completed. In total, about NIS 300 million was paid for direct damages and another NIS 200 million for indirect damage,” the authority said.
Referring to the factories’ claims, it was stated: “A.D. Mirez received an advance, and the balance will be paid to her after a final decision is made in the case in the coming days. Polyron filed a request in the red route and received compensation for damage from loss of working days of employees in the business.”