Kiryat Shmona municipal workers on Sunday began a strike to protest the city's failure to pay their September salaries.

The municipality employs four hundred workers, all of whom had expected to receive their salaries last week, and funds 280 retired residents who have not received their pensions.

The Committee of Municipal Employees said the city's funding of old-age health services and social services for its employees is also behind by a year. Funds slated for employees' convalescent benefits for 2005 have also not been paid.

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Committee Chairman Hananiah Cohen said the payment delays have become "a ritual which has continued for three years and a month."

He said the September delays were particularly painful, since "we are talking about salaries which were supposed to pay for holiday expenses."

Cohen added that "there is a possibility of finding a solution, but apparently the employees are last in the order of priorities."

Since 2004, the city has laid off some 150 employees, some of them recepients of convalescent benefits.

Cohen said 32 additional employees are expected to be laid off, who in his opinion "will not be able to find work in the city... the only place they will be able to go is the soup kitchen."

He said that instead of firing younger employees, the city should reduce the salaries of senior officials who receive higher pay.

"Instead of harming city employees, we can save hundreds of thousands of shekels in the salaries of more senior officials," he said

Municipal Spokesman Doron Shenfer said in response that the city is aware of these problems and is seeking a solution to the crisis, but the only thing it is able to do is "fight fires."

"When the current salary problem is solved, the next salary problem will immediately emerge," he said.

According to the municipality, it is the government's responsibility to intervene and create a detailed plan for solving the problems besetting the city.

Shenfer said that had the government executed such a plan, and had it kept even a small portion of the promises it made to the city during the war in the north, the municipality would have easily been able to pay its salaries.