ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani on Wednesday pledged to send the salaries of Kurdistan Region’s civil servants “as early as possible,” during his visit to the Region, where he met with Kurdish party leaders. “God willing, we will send salaries as early as possible,” Sudani told Rudaw’s Peshawa Bakhtiyar following a meeting with New Generation Movement (NGM) leader Shaswar Abdulwahid. Baghdad has shouldered the payment of the civil servants of the Kurdistan Region this year, albeit with delays.The Iraqi government has pointed to repeated problems, such as duplicate names in the payroll list. Due to ongoing issues, civil servants in the Kurdistan Region have yet to receive their October salaries. Sudani on Wednesday landed in Erbil and met with Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani where they held talks on Erbil-Baghdad relations, budgetary payments, government formation efforts nearly a month after regional elections took place. Sudani later arrived in Sulaimani and met with leaders of various parties in the city. Last month Prime Minister Barzani said during a panel at the MERI forum in Erbil that he hopes that “the leadership in Baghdad views all Iraqi citizens the same,” and commended the “largest number” of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) delegations that have visited Baghdad in recent years to resolve issues such as salary disputes. In September, Iraq’s council of ministers met in Baghdad and approved the continued payment of salaries to KRG civil servants. Sudani said then that the KRG must create employee identification numbers at the federal planning ministry by year-end to help identify duplicate salary recipients.
