by MARION D’ALLARD
(translated from French by ALISON TOMBLIN)
PHOTO/Middle East Monitor
Planned in the next few weeks, the opening of a Coca-Cola production plant is fuelling debate in the Palestinian enclave. Although it creates 1000 jobs, the water it needs risks making the Gazans’ problems of accessibility to this vital resource worse.
A Coca-Cola production plant located in the industrial zone of Karni, in the south-eastern suburbs of Gaza City, is to be opened in the next few weeks, at the end of March/ beginning of April at the latest. Linked to the the Palestinian subsidiary of the American company, which already operates three production plants in the West Bank (Ramallah, Jericho and Tulkarm), this new industrial establishment has been sitting for two years in the desk of Zahi Khouri, director of the Palestinian National Beverage Company (based in Ramallah). It was he who had the idea to create this new production plant. “The buildings have been constructed, but the inauguration and commission of this production unit have been postponed due to the Israeli air strikes in the summer of 2014,” Ziad Medoukh, the Head of the French Department at the University of Gaza explains.
Accessibility to drinking water is a real problem for Gazans
However, in the Palestinian enclave, although the Coca-Cola plant has its supporters, not everyone is taken with the idea. “There is a debate here between those who see the benefits, based on economic and social criteria, and those who feel that priority should be given to industrial projects more essential to the daily lives of the people of Gaza than a manufacturer of consumer products which, moreover, require large quantities of drinking water,” Ziad Medoukh continues. It is not a simple equation, in fact.
On the one hand, basing Coca-Cola in Gaza means that 1000 jobs are created, in an area severely afflicted by unemployment, which, according to figures published by the World Bank in 2015, has reached “a rate of over 44%, probably the highest rate in the world (…) with 39% of the population living beneath the poverty line”. Coca-Cola’s plans envisage the creation of 127 jobs, as of this coming April, with a further 600 staff to be hired between now and September 2016, meaning 1000 jobs being created in total by January 2017.
On the other hand, opponents are raising their voices against the production plant’s astronomical needs for drinking water, when 95% of the water available in the Gaza Strip is unfit for human consumption. “Access to water is a real problem for Gazans.
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