Seventy percent of Gaza workers live in poverty

Around 70 percent of workers in Gaza live in poverty, said Sami al-Amsi, the director of the Gaza General Federation of Trade Unions, the Palestine Chronicle has reported.

Gaza faces a "catastrophe" that will effect most of its population if the government does not produce a clear plan to manage the situation, said Amsi.

He called for border crossings to be opened and stressed the importance of the reconstruction process for creating jobs. He said the Strip was suffering from the "worst economic crisis in decades".

The trade union director called on the Palestinian unity government to take full responsibility for the situation in Gaza.

He said that, since its formation last year, temporary employment programmes had been cancelled and workers had been left with "unfulfilled promises".

The announcement comes just days after AFP reported on an increase in the number of suicides in Gaza.

On 29 September, the Public Workers' Union in the Gaza Strip also announced that unemployment had reached 60 percent

On 29 September, the Public Workers' Union in the Gaza Strip also announced that unemployment had reached 60 percent.

While in May, the International Monetary Fund said that recovery in the Gaza Strip was going much more "slowly than expected" after Israel's onslaught upon the coastal enclave in summer 2014.

The economy reportedly fell into recession in 2014 for the first time since 2006.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development said Gaza would be uninhabitable by 2020 in a report published on 1 September - though, after a devastating series of Israeli attacks in recent years, Gaza is already largely without safe drinking water or regular electricity. Thousands remain homeless after last summer's Israeli assault on the beseiged coastal enclave.

The report said unemployment had reached 44 percent – the highest level ever recorded in Gaza.

"Socioeconomic conditions are at their lowest point since 1967," it stated.