“Crucial” meeting in Baghdad regarding salaries of Kurdistan Region employees
The Kurdistan Regional Government delegation is scheduled to hold a meeting with the federal government in the capital on Friday regarding employee salaries.
Shafaq News Agency correspondent said that the meeting will start after one o’clock in the afternoon at the home of Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, where the regional government delegation consists of about 20 people headed by the Kurdistan Minister of Finance with the participation of many general managers in the ministry.
He added that the meeting will include discussing the December 2024 salary and the 2025 salaries.
The roots of the salary crisis in the Kurdistan Region go back to 2014, when disputes escalated between the federal government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government over the management of the oil and budget files, in addition to the repercussions of the war on ISIS, the decline in oil prices, and the subsequent spread of the Corona pandemic in the world.
Baghdad stopped sending the region’s share of the budget, and the regional government responded by exporting oil independently. This conflict led to disruption in salary payment mechanisms, which began a series of delays and financial accumulations.
Since then, there have been many attempts to find compromises between the two parties, most notably the financial agreements that stipulated the disbursement of the region’s share of the budget in exchange for its commitment to export specific quantities of oil. Despite these agreements, they have not been fully implemented due to the continued lack of trust and political differences between the two sides.
As the disputes continue, the citizens of the region bear the greatest burden. Calls have recently increased from political and economic activists for the necessity of implementing the decisions of the Federal Court, which confirmed the right of citizens to receive their salaries without any delay, while the biggest challenge remains finding a final solution that guarantees the sustainability of paying salaries and keeping the issue away from politicization.
Shafaq.com