SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Physicians and health workers in Sulaimani staged a walkout on Monday, protesting the ongoing salary saving system introduced by the Kurdistan Regional Government since 2016.
Erbil and Baghdad have agreed to pay the salaries according to the KRG’s salary-saving system, Saad al-Hadithi, the spokesperson for the Iraqi government told local media on Monday.
Jabar Mohammed Rahim, head of the Kurdistan Health Workers Syndicate, told Rudaw that they “are supporting this strike because the money Baghdad has sent for the health ministry is meant to be distributed without the saving system.”
“The Kurdistan Regional Government intends to distribute it based on the saving system,” Rahim claimed.
Had it not been for the fortitude of the Kurdistan Region’s health workers over the past few years, government hospitals would have ground to a halt, he said.
“Now it is the time for the KRG to pay them off without applying the salary saving system,” he added.
Physicians at Hiwa Hospital in Suleimani were on strike on Monday.
Dr Yad Naqishbandi, who is the representative of the striking doctors, explained their protests will continue until their demands are met and their salaries are paid without the saving system.
He warned they would expand their strike to the Erbil and Sulaimani hospitals as well.
The Iraqi government said on Monday it has released the salaries of KRG civil servants, including those of the Peshmerga.
Baghdad was only expected to send the salaries of health and education employees, but it later emerged the federal government will send an installment for all Kurdish civil employees.
The Kurdistan Region needs 900 billion Iraqi dinars ($759.4 million) to pay its 1.4 million public servants in full and on time, the KRG finance ministry stated on Sunday, adding that the Iraqi government has sent only about a third of that amount.
The ministry said it will continue to use the existing salary-saving system, a mechanism that slashes up to 40 of the salaries of Kurdish state employees, unless they received a bigger share from the Iraqi government or the financial situation improves.
Hadithi, from the Iraqi government, said that the KRG’s measures with regards to distributing the salary based on the salary-saving system are not “unilateral,” adding that the two governments have agreed on the measure.
Salaries not 'in safe hands' with KRG
In a joint press conference on Monday, the Change Movement (Gorran) and Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal) slammed the Erbil-Baghdad agreement on the distribution of the region’s salaries based on the unpopular salary saving system.
“In the past, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised several times that the Kurdistan Region civil servants will be paid as equally as Iraqi employees and thus he began forming committees to audit payroll lists of the education and health ministries,” Amin Bakir, an MP from Gorran in Baghdad, told reporters in Sulaimani’s Iraqi Parliament office on Monday.
“After the auditing finished, we suggested for their wages to be directly handed to the civil servants themselves without any deduction and in full,” he added.
In addition to the sum Baghdad has sent, Bakir said the KRG could pay the remaining government sectors without needing to rely on the saving system.
He claimed the money should not have been sent to the KRG as it will not be “in safe hands.”
He urged Abadi “to adhere to the pledges he made in which the [Kurdistan] Region’s employees will receive their salaries directly from Baghdad.”
“If there is any agreement between Baghdad and Erbil at the expense of the people of Kurdistan, civil servants and their salaries, we will investigate against any agreement done in this regard,” the Gorran MP added.
He said they would raise their objections with the Iraqi government.
'Hope aborted'
The KIU parliamentary factions in Baghdad and Erbil issued a joint statement regarding the KRG-Iraqi government decision to pay the salaries of civil servants of the Kurdistan Region based on the saving system.
“While teachers and employees from both the education and health ministries and even other ministries were expecting happy news and to receive full salaries, again, through a secret agreement between the [Kurdistan] Region and Baghdad and contrary to all the suggestions, they aborted this hope as well,” the joint statement read.
“I initially said that these promises are baseless as they are pursuing their own interests and making political rhetoric as they are not honest in the execution of their responsibilities towards the civil servants of the Kurdistan Region,” Muthana Amin, head of the KIU faction in Baghdad, said in a press conference.
Amin urged Baghdad and Erbil to revise the decision and pay the salaries of the civil servants without the saving system.
“We found it necessary to hereby condemn this behavior which contradicts the Iraqi constitution and it also morally contradicts the promises Prime Minister Abadi had made to the employees of both ministries; finance and health,” Amin added.
“I have said on many occasions and I am reiterating it today; what Haider al-Abadi has put in the budget and the way he deals with the Kurdistan Region is the treatment of an oil businessman, not a prime minister,” he claimed.
Sherko Jawdat, head of the KIU bloc in the Kurdistan Parliament, said they “will never accept this mechanism of disbursing employees’ salaries.”
Whenever the decree of paying civil servants’ salaries based on the saving system comes before parliament “we will strongly stand against and oppose it.”
Last updated at 3:55 p.m.
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