ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Wednesday extended the public holiday for civil servants originally from disputed territories until next month, allowing them to remain in their hometowns to complete additional phases of Iraq’s critical nationwide census. The KRG previously granted a one-week holiday to employees hailing from the disputed areas like Kirkuk and Nineveh to be able to take part in the crucial process. On Wednesday, the government decided to extend the holiday to December 10 in a bid to allow these people to fully register themselves in the census. Natives of the disputed areas on Tuesday returned en masse to their provinces to be registered as residents of their hometowns in the significant census. After confirming the records taken on Wednesday and Thursday, another phase will begin which includes recording more detailed information. The KRG is extending the holiday because “when the enumerators visit the families again, at least one family member must stay in the place and have all the documents of their family members and fill out the second form correctly,” according to a KRG interior ministry announcement. Kirkuk’s Kurdish population is expected to have significantly decreased after the Baath regime's Arabization process and the ousting of the Peshmerga in October 2017 following the Kurdish independence referendum when Iraqi forces re-entered Kirkuk. In the 1957 census, Kurds made up 48 percent of Kirkuk's population, Arabs 28 percent, and Turkmen 21 percent. Kirkuk, along with other disputed territories in Diyala, Nineveh, and Salahaddin, has a diverse population and was subject to Arabization policies under Saddam Hussein’s rule, where Kurdish inhabitants were displaced and their lands given to Arab settlers. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution outlines a process for resolving disputes over these territories.
