Salary delay sparks blame game between PUK and KDP

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) doesn’t have sufficient funds to meet salaries despite having already cut wages, a lawmaker said during a parliament session on Tuesday, setting off accusations of blame between the two ruling parties.

“We have found evidence today that the finance ministry has not received enough funds to distribute salaries. Even with the 21 percent [cut], this is a significant problem," Gorran MP Ali Hama Salih said in parliament.

"The revenues that should have been transferred to the ministry of finance and the treasury for distribution haven’t been collected. That's why we are concerned that the process of distributing salaries will be delayed further in the coming months until there is no money paid at all, even with the cut to salaries," he later told reporters.

Speaking in parliament, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) MP Peshawa Hawrami said that one province had not transferred funds to the government’s treasury. "As of yesterday evening, only 30 percent of revenues from two provinces have been sent to the treasury. That was why the salary schedule was changed.” 

Pushed on the matter in a later interview with Rudaw, he confirmed that he was referring to Sulaimani, which is ruled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Over the past two decades, the KDP and PUK have shared power in the Kurdistan Region, each with a separate zone of influence.

"The PUK and Sulaimani administration are under a lot of pressure to return funds to the government so that civil servants can receive their salaries,” KDP MP Hevidar Ahmed, deputy head of the finance committee in parliament, told reporters on Tuesday. “They have only sent 50 billion dinars ($38 million) to the regional government, whereas $80 million is required to be sent to the KRG treasury every month.”

Sulaimani provincial council chairman, Azad Mohammedamin, said in an interview with Rudaw that "revenues have not been returned in cash to Erbil," but have been transferred to Kurdistan’s central bank.

The deputy head of the PUK bloc in parliament accused the KDP of hoarding oil revenues, saying that oil contracts are not transparent and the companies do not pay taxes.

"In April alone, 153 billion dinars were sent to the finance ministry from the Sulaimani administration. This is why, especially for the past four months, we have been closely monitoring customs, local revenues, and tax revenues, which have been handed over to the finance ministry as it is," Luqman Wardi told reporters. “When the ministry of finance doesn’t have enough money, no one can wrap their heads around where all that oil money goes.”
 
Civil servants in the Kurdistan Region have not received their salaries in full or on time for nearly seven years. The Kurdistan Region needs 895 billion dinars a month to cover its payroll, amounting to 10.7 trillion dinars a year. The Kurdistan Region has yet to receive its budget share from Baghdad, meaning KRG employees who make more than 300,000 Iraqi dinars (approximately $200) per month will see their paycheques cut by 21 percent. 

Opposition parties hit out at both the KDP and PUK. 

"These confessions of PUK and KDP leaders about their respective corruption in and out of parliament or in the media prove that the Kurdistan Region is unfortunately experiencing the most turbulent period of its political history," Sherko Jawdat, head of the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), told reporters. 

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