ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Regional Government has welcomed a call by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for Baghdad to pay the salary of Kurdish public servants, saying that doing so requires the Iraqi government has to pay 1.2 million people and that will cost Iraq 897.5 billion Iraqi dinars ($772 million).
The KRG said in a statement that it is willing to provide the Iraqi government the list of those people who are on its payroll if Baghdad agreed to pay in full their salaries.
It also criticized the proposal for the 2018 Iraqi budget which for the first time does not refer to Erbil as the Kurdistan Region, instead choosing to use “the provinces of the Kurdistan.” It said doing so violates the Iraqi constitution recognizing the Kurdistan Region as a federal entity with its own government, legislature and laws.
The KRG detailed that it has 1,249,481 people on its payroll, including 455,000 public servants (police forces included), 266,465 Peshmerga and local Asayish (Kurdish security).
PM Abadi stated on Tuesday that his government is willing to pay the Kurdish salaries.
The Kurdistan Region has been struggling to pay its large employees because of the drop in oil prices, the war on ISIS, and budget cuts by Iraq since 2014.
The KRG said it is willing to provide the list of its employees it collected through the biometric mechanism aimed at canceling double salaries and ghost employees.
PM Abadi on Monday doubted the Kurdish Region has hundreds of thousands of Peshmerga fighters, saying it is a small fighting force while many stay at home.
He said the Peshmerga must either come under the command of the Iraqi government, or be downsized to a small, local force paid by Erbil.
The KRG demanded for the Iraqi government not to approve a budget proposal presented by Baghdad’s finances ministry that “for the first time since 2003 the constitutional term of (the Kurdistan Region-Iraq) has been removed and instead used the term 'provinces of the Kurdistan Region,' ” the statement detailed. It added that this violates Article 117 of the Iraqi constitution that recognized the Kurdistan Region as a federal region with its own government, parliament and judiciary.
It said that the Iraqi government trying to deal directly with the provinces of the Kurdistan Region is also in violation of the Iraqi constitution since the constitution recognized the four provinces collectively as one entity.
The KRG pointed out that the budget proposal for the first time since 2005 has cut the Kurdish share from its entitled 17 percent down to a mere 12 percent. It added that the KRG and Iraq have since 2005 agreed that the Kurdish population constitutes 17 percent of the Iraqi population, and this remains to be the case unless a census conducted.
The regional government stated the Iraqi constitution does not allow the federal government to decrease the constitutional powers of the Kurdish government, nor does it allow the constitution to be amended in this regard.
It concluded that PM Abadi has long advocated that every side respect the constitution, and now it is his turn to show in practice that his government will be doing so.
