KRG employees should be paid as their Iraqi peers: MP

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s finance ministry must fund the civil servant salaries of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) just as it does those employed by the federal government as per a court ruling earlier this week, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s finance committee told Rudaw on Saturday.

“The Ministry of Finance in the federal government is obliged to fund the salaries of Kurdistan Region employees similar to their peers working in the government and federal institutions,” Atwan al-Atwani, the head of the parliament’s finance committee, told Rudaw’s Halkawt Aziz in Baghdad.

The obligation comes from a Wednesday ruling of the Federal Supreme Court that instructed both the KRG and the federal government to “nationalize” the salaries of the Region’s employees, transferring the responsibility for paying them from Erbil to Baghdad. This includes all government employees, retirees, and those receiving social security benefits, with the funds “deducted from the Region's share according to the budget law for this year and the coming years.”

“Everyone must adhere to these indivisible decisions, they must be implemented equally and all at once,” said Atwani.

Iraq’s three-year budget passed last year includes a record $152 billion in spending, of which the Kurdistan Region’s share is 12.6 percent of Baghdad’s "actual spending,” which is the amount of money Iraq spends or earns throughout a specific fiscal period. 

The KRG has said that it needs over 900 billion dinars (about $686 million) monthly to cover its payroll, but with its oil exports through Turkey halted since March, it does not have the funds. The two governments have since been in talks to amend the federal budget in order to guarantee federal payments to cover the salaries

In January, the federal government agreed to pay 618 billion dinars monthly to cover the Kurdistan Region’s payroll. The payment is Erbil’s share from the budget and not a loan. 

Following the court’s ruling, “The salaries of the Kurdistan Region will be extracted and placed with the governing expenses, so that they are not subject to the actual spending paragraph [of the budget law],” Atwani said.

Jassim al-Umairi, the head of Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court, told Iraqi state media last month that the civil servants of the Kurdistan Region must not be affected by disputes between Erbil and Baghdad.

“It is necessary that problems should not arise as a result of the KRG not implementing what the budget law has mandated, causing a delay in receiving salaries for employees and retirees in the Region. They [KRG civil servants] are also a part of the Iraqi people, and the federal government must work on solving this issue,” Umairi noted, stressing the need for a “radical solution” to the salary problem.

During a speech at a ceremony commemorating influential Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim last month, Kurdistan Region President Barzani said that “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.”

Teachers in Sulaimani and Halabja provinces went on strike in September over unpaid wages. With promises from government officials to meet their demands, some teachers have begun returning to the classroom.

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