ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - More than 24,000 pensioners in the Kurdistan Region have gone without salaries for the past four months due to delays in pension certification, the Kurdistan Retirees Union noted on Sunday.
The Union's spokesperson, Sadiq Osman, told Rudaw that the pension enrollment of “more than 24,000 pensioners has not been completed this year,” adding that the pensioners “will not be able to receive their salaries until the certification is complete.” He warned that “the situation of pensioners is dire and requires urgent action.”
Osman emphasized that out of more than 25,000 people who retired over the past three years in the Kurdistan Region, fewer than 1,000 of them had their pension certification completed and received their pensions for the month of March 2025. The rest, over 24,000 people, last received a salary in November.
He added that all pension processing procedures must be conducted at the General Directorate of Pensions, affiliated with the Ministry of Finance and Economy in Erbil. This centralization has created a significant backlog, contributing to the delay.
Osman also explained that the Kurdistan Retirees Union is calling for pension certification to be done at the provincial level to expedite the process. Additionally, he urged the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to use its internal revenues to pay pensioners until the certification process is complete.
Of note, article 12 of Iraq’s three-year federal budget bill, passed in June 2023, obliges the KRG to hand over the non-oil revenues to the federal government, in exchange for the Kurdistan Region’s 12.6 percent share of the federal budget.
The Union’s spokesperson also attributed “the delay in the processing of pensioners” to ministerial bureaucracy.
In November 2022, Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled that the KRG must implement Iraq’s unified pension law of 2014. However, the law was not enforced in the Kurdistan Region until July 2024.
Under the law, once a pensioner's enrollment is complete, they will receive all their outstanding salaries in one lump sum. “No one's salary will be lost,” Osman assured, explaining that pensioners enrolled in March, for example, would receive both January and February salaries along with their March payment.
Soran Hussein contributed to this article.
