ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A group of Kurdistan Region’s striking teachers plan to protest in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Sunday, bringing their demands for regular monthly payments of their salaries and permanent employment for non-contract teachers to the Iraqi capital.
Karokh Abdullah, a representative of non-contract teachers, said that their protest will be critical of both the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
“We will gather there and ask the Iraqi federal government to not differentiate between the Kurdistan Region’s civil servants and Iraq’s civil servants in terms of financing salaries, and to treat them equally,” Abdullah told Rudaw’s Soran Hussein.
The 2023-2024 academic year in the Kurdistan Region began on September 13, when schools in the provinces of Erbil and Duhok and the administrations of Soran and Zakho opened their doors for students. However, institutions in the provinces of Sulaimani and Halabja and the administrations of Garmiyan, Raparin, and Koya remain closed as teachers are on strike over unpaid wages by the KRG.
Mohammed Chamchamali, a striking teacher, said that they plan on filing a complaint with the Federal Supreme Court that will ask Baghdad to directly distribute their salaries without going through the KRG.
The frequent delay in paying salaries, which has been an issue for the cash-strapped KRG for nearly a decade, has exacerbated the concerns of civil servants, many of whom have no other source of income.
Teachers and other public employees went unpaid for around 90 days before a deal was struck between Baghdad and Erbil in mid-September, in which the federal government agreed to loan the KRG 2.1 trillion Iraqi dinars to cover three months of payroll. Teachers are yet to receive their salaries for the months of September and October.
In response to a petition from several Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi parliament, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani’s office on Wednesday said that Baghdad has no objection to distributing the Kurdistan Region’s salaries directly, but stressed that the process requires Erbil to send official employee data to Baghdad.
Sudani himself had suggested this during talks with the KRG, Jamal Kochar, a member of the parliament’s finance committee, told Rudaw in July, but the proposal was rejected by Erbil, who viewed it as an attempt to belittle the political entity of the Kurdistan Region and its government.
