The Kurdistan Region’s civil servants went unpaid for around 90 days, before a deal was struck between Baghdad and Erbil in mid-September, in which the federal government agreed to lend the KRG 2.1 trillion Iraqi dinars to pay the salaries for three months.
The delay in paying salaries has exacerbated the concerns of the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants, many of whose livelihoods depend solely on state wages. Workers of several sectors have gone on strike in Sulaimani and Kirkuk provinces, including teachers and health workers.
Dara Sekaniani, Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) MP from Sulaimani, told Rudaw on Monday that a Kurdish delegation had visited Baghdad the day before, met with a number of members of the Iraqi parliament’s finance committee and handed them a document containing the signatures of 36,000 of the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants.
“They [civil servants] have asked for their salaries to be financed and kept separate from political competition… Therefore, during today’s parliament session, signatures were collected for Baghdad to directly finance the salaries of the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants,” said Sekaniani.
The petition has reportedly been signed by nearly 50 Kurdish MPs from different blocs, including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the New Generation Movement (NGM), the KIU, and the Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal), in addition to several MPs from other ethnic groups.
Jamal Kochar, a member of the parliament’s finance committee, told Rudaw in July that Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani had suggested Baghdad directly distributes the salaries during talks with the KRG, adding that the proposal was rejected by Erbil, who viewed it as an attempt to belittle the political entity of the Region and its government.
Iraq announced that the 2.1 trillion dinars will be paid in three equal installments and will cover the salaries of September, October, and November. However, the KRG has used the first 700 billion dinar installment of the loan to pay the salaries for July. The civil servants have not been paid for August either.
The Kurdish government has failed to pay its civil servants on time and in full for nearly a decade due to the financial crisis. Economic woes in the Kurdistan Region have worsened in recent months after Turkey suspended the flow of Kurdish crude 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.
Iraq passed its highly-contentious budget bill for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025 in June, which includes a record $152 billion in spending, of which the Kurdistan Region’s share is 12.6.
Under the Erbil-Baghdad loan agreement, the KRG’s share in the 2023 federal budget will be used to pay back the loans. If Erbil’s share was not enough to cover the loans, its dues will be settled using its allocations within the 2024 budget.
