Unpaid teachers protest lack of formal employment in Kirkuk

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Hundreds of recently graduated teachers who have been working without receiving payments for years gathered in Kirkuk on Wednesday to protest their lack of contractual employment, calling on the Iraqi government to address their concerns. 

Iraq’s Education Minister Ibrahim Namis al-Jubouri announced on Tuesday that the council of ministers has agreed to include teachers of the graduating class of 2020 in the 2023 budget, granting them employment by contract. The decision does not include graduates from any other year, many of whom have been teaching free of charge and without contracts for years.

“We teach at schools without any privileges… Yesterday evening, a decision was issued to employ graduates of 2020, we are graduates of 2019, 2021, 2022 and we are still waiting… We have been teaching for free for two years,” one of the protesters told Rudaw’s Hiwa Hussamadin.

Most graduates resort to teaching for free hoping it would lead to full-time employment.

The protesters called on the Iraqi government to include their names for employment alongside the 2020 graduates.

Kirkuk’s Director of Education Abd Ali Hussein To’ma met with representatives of Wednesday’s protests hours later, vowing to convey their demands to the education ministry.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani on Tuesday said that the teachers had the right to be employed, and stressed that the issue cannot go on any longer.

“The "free lecturers" spent years as volunteers, and the issue of hiring them is an inherited file (from the previous government), and they have the right to be hired according to the laws. But, this approach cannot be continued,” said the Iraqi premier, referring to the unpaid teachers. 

Unemployment is one of the biggest obstacles facing the youth in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, leading thousands to leave the country on a yearly basis in search of better opportunities even if it is through illegal and hazardous routes.

At least five people were wounded in Kirkuk on Monday as police applied force to disperse hundreds of angry demonstrators who protested the lack of employment by the city’s North Oil Company and tried to storm its headquarters.