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Kurdistan
The meeting of the KRG Council of Ministers was chaired by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. Photo: Prime Minister's Office
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced plans to reduce salaries and allowances of higher-earning government employees, among a round of decisions issued late Sunday.
Employees whose salaries are under the 300,000 Iraqi dinars ($251) per month mark will be unaffected, while those above the mark will see their paychecks cut by 21 percent, the KRG said in an official statement following a cabinet meeting led by Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. The salaries of the senior KRG employees will be reduced by 50 percent.
In addition to the lower salary bracket, the decision will not affect allowances and salaries of families of veterans and martyrs, families designated as affected by the Anfal genocide campaign, political prisoners, the disabled and those with special needs.
According to the KRG statement, the measure is only “temporary” affecting salaries for the month of June. In the statement, KRG expressed hopes that negotiations with Baghdad would result in an agreement to resume paying public workers’ salaries in full.
To resolve the outstanding issues between Erbil and Baghdad, President of Kurdistan Region, Nechirvan Barzani, arrived in Baghdad on Saturday, where he met with Iraqi official and Shiite political leaders to discuss the ongoing economic crisis and relations between the two governments.
Iraq’s central government halted budget transfers to the KRG at the start of this year under then-caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, as Baghdad accused Erbil of failing to send even a single barrel of oil in exchange for its share of the federal budget – an arrangement agreed in December.
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