ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A delegation from the KRG’s education and health ministries handed over their employee list to Iraqi officials to be audited, the first step in the process of the central government paying KRG civil servant salaries.
A technical team from the two ministries is in Baghdad to meet with Iraqi officials, and the Iraqi team will visit the Kurdistan Region in the future after they select representatives to conduct the audit, the Kurdish delegation said in a statement.
The Iraqi government has formed a committee of seven to audit the KRG’s health and education employee lists. Two members of the committee are from the KRG.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said on multiple occasions that his government is committed to paying salaries of state employees after an audit is conducted by the federal government.
He doubts the accuracy of the KRG's payroll list, saying it contains many people who receive more than one salary, so-called ghost employees, people who receive money but do not work.
The Iraqi team includes representatives from Baghdad’s education, health, and planning ministries as well as auditing authorities, the Kurdish delegation stated.
The payroll lists presented by the two KRG ministries is based on updated information collected under the biometric system, a digital record introduced by Erbil as part of reforms announced to cancel double salaries and ghost employees.
The list handed over to the Iraqi government is based on the full salaries of the employees, the delegation said, unlike a similar list that details the partial salaries the KRG has paid its employees since 2016 due to the ongoing financial crisis.
The health and education ministries have the most number of people on their payroll, after the Peshmerga ministry.
Reduced or late payments of state salaries was the main cause of a week of anti-government protests that took place in some Kurdish cities in December. Three people were killed in the protests.
The KRG maintains that they have to carry out radical reform of their salary system and the pension fund in order to afford to pay salaries on time in 2018 if Erbil and Baghdad fail to reach an agreement on the budget dispute and other outstanding issues.
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