Kirkuk Oil Engineering Graduates Protest Over Lack of Jobs

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - Petroleum engineering graduates in Kirkuk protested on Monday over years of unemployment, accusing authorities of hiring workers from other Iraqi provinces for oil-sector jobs while qualified local graduates remain without government positions.

The Oct. 19 protest brought together graduates who said they had repeatedly appealed to officials for employment without receiving a practical response.

Speaking to Kurdistan24 correspondent Hemn Delo, several protesters said some members of the group had graduated as far back as 2012 and had now spent more than a decade waiting for government jobs.

One young protester said Kirkuk's status as a major oil-producing city made the situation particularly frustrating.

"Kirkuk is an oil city and it needs our expertise," he said, adding that applicants from Basra, Mosul, Tikrit and Diyala were being employed locally while graduates from Kirkuk were left without opportunities.

The protesters said they had repeatedly approached lawmakers, officials and members of the Kirkuk Provincial Council.

According to the graduates, those officials had promised to raise their cases with the oil minister and send formal requests on their behalf, but the protesters said the discussions had not led to concrete action.

"We have visited them many times," the group said, describing the commitments they received as "talk and empty promises."

A female petroleum engineering graduate said she had joined a similar protest seven years earlier for the same reason and was still waiting for employment.

"We graduated more than 10 to 13 years ago and are still waiting," she said.

She questioned the value of completing specialized university studies without corresponding employment opportunities and called for positions to be allocated to the graduates in Iraq's 2027 federal budget.

The protesters said they intend to continue demonstrating until their demands are addressed.

Their complaints reflect a wider problem facing university and institute graduates in Iraq, where limited government employment opportunities have generated repeated protests in recent years.

In Kirkuk, the issue carries an additional dimension because of the province's oil resources and the presence of the North Oil Company.

Graduates participating in Monday's protest argued that people trained locally in petroleum engineering should have greater access to employment in the sector operating in their own city.

They also alleged that favoritism and political-party interference sometimes influence recruitment, allowing applicants from central and southern Iraqi provinces to obtain positions in Kirkuk oil projects ahead of local graduates.

Those claims were raised by the protesters; the source material does not include a response from the Oil Ministry, the North Oil Company or Kirkuk authorities.

For the graduates, however, the central demand remains unchanged after years of appeals and demonstrations: they want a defined employment mechanism and job opportunities reflecting both their qualifications and Kirkuk's role in Iraq's oil sector.

Kurdistan24 correspondent Hemn Delo contributed to this report.