ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Wednesday said that the federal government’s reservations about its payroll information do not justify a month-long delay in disbursing public sector salaries.
“It is more than 30 days since the complete payroll list of the Region’s civil servants for July was sent, along with all the requests [of the federal government],” the KRG said in a statement after a Council of Ministers’ meeting.
Baghdad has sent less than one percent of the total funds for July salaries and the bulk is yet to be paid.
The KRG criticized the delay as “discriminatory treatment,” stating that the federal government “continuously reports on shortcomings of its institution’s accounting but has not delayed or withheld the salaries of the civil servants of other areas of Iraq.”
The Iraqi government has repeatedly pointed to problems such as duplicate names in the payroll as reasons for delaying disbursements of funds.
The KRG said that public sector salaries must be kept separate from any political disputes between the two governments. “Based on the court decision, salaries are separate from the tensions between the two governments... and must not be intertwined with any other matter,” it stated.
In early July, the Council of Ministers instructed the ministries to submit their payroll details to the Iraqi government in the first ten days of the month “so that there are no remaining excuses that will lead to delaying the salaries.”
The payroll details for June were not sent until late in the month. However, the details of July were sent within the timeframe instructed by the KRG.
The KRG has failed to pay the salaries of its civil servants on time and in full for a decade due to a financial crisis that worsened when its oil exports were halted a year ago following a court ruling on a dispute between Iraq and Turkey over the Kurdistan Region’s independent oil sales. The KRG now relies on local income and its controversial federal budget share.
