Abadi: Baghdad cannot send salaries of public employees in Kurdistan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi Prime Minister on Tuesday said that his government cannot send the budget of the Kurdistan Region, including the salaries of the public employees.

Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi PM, in his weekly press briefings in Baghdad stated the Iraqi government cannot pay the salaries of government employees in the Kurdistan Region because of "corruption" in the institutions of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

The accusations come at a time when Iraq ranks high on corruption in international measures. According to the Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index, Iraq is "the 166th least corrupt nation out of 175 countries.”

Iraqi PM first claimed that he could not trust the number of government employees and Peshmerga fighters provided by the KRG and suggested the numbers be audited.

His latest comment also contradicts his October 31 remarks when in another weekly press conference, Abadi pledged that the government would immediately send the salaries of the Peshmerga forces and public employees in the Kurdistan Region.

Additionally, on December 6, Abadi stated that his cabinet had a list of KRG employees who were being audited in order for Baghdad to send the overdue salaries.

The KRG officials, including the KRG PM Nechirvan Barzani, expressed the government’s readiness to hand over the Region’s oil and other sources of revenues to Baghdad if the Federal Government of Iraq agreed to send the full 17 percent of the budget to the Kurdistan Region.

The Kurdish leadership has regularly complained that Baghdad failed to provide it with its fair share of the budget and as a result, opted to sign its own oil agreements in 2014, just before the start of the war against the Islamic State (IS).

Editing by Sam A.