Senior Kurdistan Region officials pay tribute to workers across the region
This year’s Labor Day comes as the world, including the Kurdistan Region, grapples with the highly infectious COVID-19, the kind of health threat that has not been seen for a century.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Friday, May 1, top Kurdistan Region officials issued statements paying tribute to workers in the Kurdistan Region, as well as in the world more broadly, on the occasion of International Labor Day.
This year’s Labor Day comes as the world, including the Kurdistan Region, grapples with the highly infectious COVID-19, the kind of health threat that has not been seen for a century—since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
The response of the Kurdistan Region has been spearheaded by its health care workers, who due to their “round-the-clock” dedication, have saved many lives from COVID-19, the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, said in a tweet which hailed those in the health care field as “essential workers” in the struggle against the deadly disease.
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The Kurdistan Region has extended a region-wide curfew several times to better curb the spread of the coronavirus in the region. Yet the economic consequences, including a significant loss of jobs, as well as a decrease in oil prices following the world-wide economic slowdown, have forced the KRG to ease some of its earlier restrictions on a phased basis, moving toward a more normal situation.
“[I] look forward to more people returning to work in the days ahead,” the Prime Minister concluded in his tweet.
The former president of the Kurdistan Region and still the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Masoud Barzani, tweeted his “warmest salutes” to all the workers of the Kurdistan Region, Iraq, and the world, whose contributions “are indeed of great value to humanity.”
The KRG in a series of preventive health measures has closed down all gathering places, including businesses and markets, putting a huge financial burden on the regional government itself and on citizens.
The negative impact of the region-wide curfew has been “immense” especially on workers, said the Kurdistan Region’s President Nechirvan Barzani, in his May 1 statement.
Barzani reiterated his “full support for laborers’ legitimate rights and demands” with regard to better standards of living and working conditions, as well as for their wellbeing. He further praised the “pivotal role” of Kurdistan’s workers in rebuilding the country.
Editing by Laurie Mylroie
