ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Sunday laid the foundation stone of a silo in Halabja.
“The construction of this silo is a part of our plans and programs aimed at further serving the farmers of this area and sustaining the agricultural sector,” Barzani said.
He said the goal is to create job opportunities while strengthening trade and the local economy.
A budget of over 27.2 billion Iraqi dinars (about $21 million) has been dedicated for the project, which will be built by Admin Group and the Turkish ABP TDS company.
After years of waiting, Halabja is finally close to being officially recognized as a province. The Iraqi cabinet in March last year approved a bill to declare Halabja a province, in recognition of the 35th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s brutal chemical attack on the city. For the decision to be finalized, the parliament needs to pass the bill, but a vote continues to be postponed.
The delay in the vote has also been attributed to the fact that other areas of federal Iraq also seek to become provinces. For instance, Tal Afar wants to become independent from Nineveh.
A similar attempt to elevate Halabja to provincial status took place in 2013. However, a deterioration of Erbil-Baghdad relations and disagreements between Sunni and Shiite blocs of the parliament prevented the legislature from passing the bill.
On this decade-long delay, Barzani said “we emphasize that these procedures must be completed as soon as possible at the federal level, in a formal manner, so that Halabja can be recognized as a province and have a dedicated budget for its development.”
Barzani said that Halabja "has become a symbol of the oppression faced by the people of Kurdistan. The victims of the previous regime, in Kurdistan and Iraq as a whole, should be adequately compensated. We will focus our efforts on this issue, and all the Kurdish political parties in Baghdad must have a unified voice and stance on this issue."
Halabja used to be a city within Sulaimani province. Some residents have complained that not much has changed since its status as a province was recognized by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in June 2013.
