“Iraq’s wealth is for all Iraqis. It must not be differentiated among different people, whether it is on the topics of employment, salaries, or investment. We do not have first or second class Iraqis. All Iraqis are the same,” Abadi told reporters following a Baghdad meeting with Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani.
Barzani arrived in Baghdad on Saturday to attend a ceremony commemorating Shiite cleric Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. He later met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani and other senior Iraqi officials.
“The citizen should not pay the price [for political disputes], whether the citizen is in Erbil, Duhok, Najaf, Basra, or Anbar. The citizen says that I am not involved in political disputes and I am an employee of the Iraqi state. Politicians should not look at disputes but look at the best interests of the citizen,” Abadi said.
During his speech at the ceremony, Barzani talked about budget issues and problems with paying the salaries of the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants.
“Due to the lack of budget and salary in the Kurdistan Region, employees and citizens live in a very dire situation. This has negatively affected all sectors in the Kurdistan Region,” he said, calling for the resolution of the issue as a key responsibility “since the Kurdistan Region and its employees are a part of Iraq.”
The frequent delay in paying salaries, which has been an issue for the cash-strapped Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for nearly a decade, has made life difficult for civil servants, many of whom have no other source of income and have not been paid for the last three months of 2023.
Delegations from the KRG have visited Baghdad frequently over the past months to discuss amending the federal budget to guarantee Kurdish civil servants receive their salaries on time. The KRG described its latest meeting with the federal government last week as “positive” and said that Erbil has “fulfilled” its obligations.
In a meeting with Barzani on Saturday, former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki said that reaching an understanding between Erbil and Baghdad on outstanding issues is an “inevitable obligation.”
