Thousands of teachers protest in Sulaimani over unpaid salaries

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Thousands of teachers took to the streets in Sulaimani and Halabja provinces on Sunday to protest months of unpaid salaries, threatening to not return to classrooms if the government does not pay their wages.

On the same day the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) education ministry announced the issuing of a ministerial order for permanent and non-contract teachers to return to classrooms.

Protesters had two main demands; non-contract teachers called for permanent employment while permanent teachers urged the government to pay their salaries for the months of August, September, and October.

Protests were held in Sulaimani city center, Halabja city, Garmiyan, and Raparin independent administrations, as well as east Erbil's Koya district.

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Sunday urged teachers across the Region to end their strike in order to not jeopardize the students’ education, stressing that the KRG is “making every effort to improve the current situation.”

“I call on the teachers and employees of the education and higher education [ministries] who are struggling with the [economic] crisis and salary delays in any part of Kurdistan, not to allow the education, teaching, and learning of the youth become the victim of the circumstances,” Barzani said while attending a graduation ceremony at the University of Soran.

The Kurdistan Region’s civil servants 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 lend the KRG 2.1 trillion Iraqi dinars to pay the salaries for three months.

Iraq announced that the 2.1 trillion dinars will be paid in three equal installments and will cover the salaries of September, October, and November. However, the KRG has used the first 700 billion dinar installment of the loan to pay the salaries for July. The civil servants have not been paid for August either. 

The cash-strapped KRG imposed a freeze on new, permanent hires as it failed to pay civil servant salaries on time and in full for nearly a decade due to the financial crisis. Economic woes in the Kurdistan Region have worsened in recent months after Turkey suspended the flow of Kurdish crude oil through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to its Ceyhan port in March following a ruling from a Paris arbitration court, causing the KRG billions of dollars in losses.