Teachers in Kurdistan, Iraq, demand payment of salaries

Dozens of teachers in the provinces of Sulaymaniyah and Erbil in northern Iraq protested yesterday against the austerity measures and demanded the Kurdistan Regional Government pay their salaries in full, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Teachers have called for a review of their salaries and an end to the savings system which saw the government reduce their wages in an effort to cut costs. They threatened to continue their protests and sit-in, and expand them if their demands are not met.

In Dohuk, in the north of the Kurdish province, teachers also organised a protest demanding Baghdad pay their salaries.

Meanwhile, doctors working in the public health sector continued their strike for the second week in a row in several hospitals and health centres in the region.

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The Kurdistan Regional Government announced last week that the region’s Ministry of Finance will not be able to pay the full salaries of civil servants from the allocations provided to them by the federal budget for 2018.

According to the Kurdistan government, the Iraqi government in Baghdad has sent only a third of the health and education employees’ salaries.