KRG slams Iraqi government over salary delay

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The spokesperson for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Saturday slammed Baghdad for its delay in sending funds to pay civil sector salaries.

“The salaries of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) employees were supposed to be sent last week, but once again, contrary to all the statements and talk in the meetings and agreements, the sending of the money was delayed,” KRG spokesperson Peshawa Hawramani said in a post on X. 

Public sector workers in the Kurdistan Region went unpaid for around 90 days before a deal was struck between Baghdad and Erbil in mid-September that saw the federal government agree to lend the KRG 2.1 trillion dinars to cover three months of salaries - September, October, and November.

The loan was to be sent in three equal installments. The KRG used the first 700 billion dinar installment to pay July salaries and workers still have not been paid for August. Teachers in Sulaimani and Halabja provinces are on strike over unpaid wages.

Hawramani said that a KRG delegation will travel to Baghdad this week to meet with the federal government and hopes to secure a “final and radical” decision on the matter.

“There is nothing left for us to do, but if the situation continues like this, we cannot remain silent against the violation of the constitutional rights of the people of the Kurdistan Region,” Hawramani said. 

The cash-strapped KRG has put a freeze on new, permanent hires and has struggled to pay civil servant salaries on time and in full for nearly a decade due to financial crises. Economic woes in the Kurdistan Region worsened after Turkey suspended the flow of Kurdish oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to its Ceyhan port in March following a ruling from a Paris arbitration court, causing the KRG billions of dollars in losses.