SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – The head of Sulaimani education department has called on public sector teachers to go on strike due to delayed and reduced salaries, but has also urged them to avoid staging protests in public places. His call was rejected by the Ministry of Education.
Dlshad Omar is the top education official in Sulaimani province who was nominated to the post by Gorran Movement, Kurdistan’s largest opposition party.
He lamented the fact that the KRG is still unable to provide basic services, and pay salaries of government employees in full or on time including those of teachers about three decades since its foundations.
He urged teachers to go to work, but boycott classes, and for those teachers whose schools are outside of the city to stay in their homes.
Teachers staged protests and boycotted classes for months both in 2015, and 2016. The schooling for over 700,000 students in Sulaimani and Halabja provinces was virtually shut down from October to January last year. A council that organized the protests then decided to end the strike in January.
Omar, from the Sulaimani education, urged teachers to limit their activities to a boycott of classes because “from what we have noticed, the demonstrations are about to become part of factional, and political rivalries, and the rivalry between political individuals.”
He asked the Kurdish authorities to release those teachers detained by the security forces during the deadly protests that began since Monday, adding that he will personally work to set such teachers free.
He concluded by saying that the KRG has to form an interim government to address the many crises that face the Region including an ongoing financial crisis.
Shorish Ghafouri, the spokesperson for the KRG’s Ministry of Education, told Rudaw that they do not support a call to boycott, “because it is not a solution.”
Gorran decided to withdraw from the KRG coalition government on Wednesday.
Jamal Mohammed, the head of the party’s grand council, had also called on the people of Kurdistan to go on strike in the Kurdistan Region.
“We call on all the people of Kurdistan to go on nationwide strike, boycott and take similar measures so that we put a large amount of pressure on this government,” Mohammed, the head of Gorran’s National Assembly said then.
Gorran, and the smaller Islamic Group (Komal) have called for the formation of an interim government, something rejected by Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani.
Barzani on Monday asked the Kurdish parliament to set a date for the general elections within three months which he said will help to solve the problems of the Kurdistan Region.
He said the people should realize that the KRG’s revenues “have been slashed by half” since the loss of the oil-fields in Kirkuk in mid-October.
The KRG also maintains that it is also unable to pay state salaries in full or on time because of continued Iraqi budget cuts since early-2014.
However, Barzani has said they are still able to pay the salaries.
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