Social workers to begin nationwide strike at noon

Social workers in Welfare Ministry offices throughout the country will go on strike starting at noon on Sunday, Army Radio reported, in protest of the violent attack on one of the social workers in the North last week. The incident occurred last Wednesday, when the patient came to the aid office clerk and demanded custody of her children, whom she had abandoned several months earlier. When the social worker explained that the children's return depended on a committee decision, the patient began to scream and attacked the clerk, pulling the her hair and beating her head against the wall. The social worker was hospitalized as a result.