AMMAN (AFP) – Nearly 7,000 workers with the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Jordan on Friday ended a three-day strike after the body agreed to study ways of improving pay and conditions, an agency spokesman said.

The strike, the third since April, had closed schools and forced health centres to work on an emergency-only basis.
“It has been agreed to end the strike while awaiting the results of a study by the agency aimed at improving employees' living conditions, in particular by increasing salaries,” said Matar Saqr, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jordan.
Results of the study should be known “on May 27, at the latest,” he told AFP, adding that a meeting would follow to look at ways of revising contract clauses covering insurance and workers' living conditions.
The workers, who include teachers and medical staff, had also gone on strike on April 20 and 29 to press their claim for a seven percent pay rise.
The UN agency provides education to 123,000 pupils at 177 schools in Jordan, as well as health services at 24 centres, the official said.
In all, UNRWA cares for some 4.2 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, around 1.8 million of them in Jordan.
The agency appealed last November to oil-rich Arab states in the Gulf to help meet a 160-million-dollar projected budget deficit in 2009.