“On Thursday salaries will be paid to those directorates of the health and education ministries that have prepared their payrolls,” reads a statement from the Ministry of Finance and the Economy.
This comes at a time after the KRG devised a new austerity system in which the salary saving system percentage of high earners, excluding those of high ranking officials, such as ministers and MPs, is to be capped at 30 percent, while the lowest would be at 10 percent.
The Kurdistan Health Staff Syndicate of Sulaimani announced on Tuesday that they had been given assurances by the government that their salaries will be paid with the new system.
The KRG has promised to pay the salaries according to a new system announced last week that will significantly ease the cuts by up to 60 percent. State employees, especially teachers and healthcare workers in the provinces of Sulaimani and Halabja, call the changes unsatisfactory.
Sulaimani’s Education Department appeared to have reached a deal with striking teachers on Tuesday while the provincial branch of the Kurdistan Health Syndicate announced the conditional end of their strike.
Some schools resumed classes on Wednesday, as have some healthcare workers.
Mariwan Omer, the director general of Sulaimani's Education Department told Rudaw on Wednesday, that studies in the education centers resumed, but it would take a number of days before they normalize.
The teachers had said they will end their strike once the government commits to pay the salaries in full and every 30 days, and for the government to announce a mechanism to pay back the amount cut from their wages since 2016 under the salary-saving system.
The salary saving system was introduced amid a financial crisis in 2016. The unpopular austerity measures have resulted in salaries being delayed, reduced by various amounts to civil servants, and sometimes not sent at all.
The highly unpopular cuts have provoked a backlash among public sector workers with protests spreading in March throughout the Kurdistan Region's major cities.
