ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has called upon Peshmerga forces and members of security agencies to register their names in the government’s new electronic payment system, aimed at reducing corruption in workplaces and enhancing transparency in the region, otherwise their salaries will not be paid. According to information obtained by Rudaw, Barzani has ordered the Peshmerga forces, especially the ministry’s 70 and 80 units, to register under the biometric system. The Peshmerga Ministry’s Chief of Staff, Jabar Yawar, told Rudaw, “The process of biometric registration for salaries and elections cards has started in the Peshmerga Ministry and, after that process is finished, it will begin among Peshmerga soldiers of the 70 and 80 units.” Barzani has reportedly emphasized that whoever fails to register in the new biometric system will not be paid by the government. Commenting on the order issued by Barzani, Yawar told Rudaw English, "I have not seen it myself, but if we do receive it, we will hasten the process by increasing our teams" carrying out the registrations into the new system. Nearly 90 percent of civil servants have registered under the electronic payment system, numbering around 843,000 people who are currently on the Kurdish government’s payroll. The biometric registration of government employees was launched on October 10 and will continue until February 10. The process of registration will continue for Peshmerga forces until further notice. The mandatory electronic system is expected to reduce the number of ghost workers who do not actually work but are paid by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) through falsification of personnel or payroll records. The system is designed to prevent individual employees from receiving more than one salary, effectively limiting fraud and mismanagement of public assets, authorities have said. “For the first time we have reliable statistics about the number of people on the government payroll, which will be the base for our future decisions,” Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said at a recent cabinet meeting. Government data show that nearly 1.4 million people are officially employed by the KRG, consuming an estimated 70 percent of its overstretched annual budget. The new payment system is modern banking technology that uses biometric authentication to identify the user and authorize the payment through a bank account verified by fingerprint scanning. The payment reform is part of larger austerity measures that the KRG has struggled to implement in collaboration with the World Bank to tackle the ongoing financial crisis that has gripped its economy since early 2014. The economic reforms have caused outrage across the Kurdistan Region with several riots and strikes.
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
