Kirkuk Residents Demand Dissolution of Provincial Council
Kirkuk residents from all communities rallied on Oct. 30 over poor services, high prices and missing oil revenue, demanding the provincial council be dissolved.
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - A significant number of Kirkuk residents from all communities poured into the streets on Friday, to protest the lack of basic services, soaring prices and the disappearance of oil revenue. They sharply criticized the city’s administration and demanded the immediate dissolution of the Kirkuk provincial council.
At a rally in the center of the city, citizens loudly voiced their anger at the deep decline in services, corruption and the marginalization of the city’s population.
The demonstrators stressed that Kirkuk’s administration and its representatives in parliament have lost public trust and have delivered no significant service projects.
Instead, they said, the city has been driven into collapse in every respect.
Women were among those who raised their voices at the protest. One participant told Kurdistan24: “Kirkuk sits on the world’s oil treasury, yet our elderly and sick wait in long lines for a little white oil! Hospitals have no medicine, and we must buy it outside at high prices.
Even instead of helping, they tell us to take our father to a nursing home. Where is the revenue of all that oil sold every day?”
Another citizen spoke to Kurdistaan24 about the demolition of poor families’ homes in Kurdish neighborhoods under the pretext of encroachment.
He said that although the people of Kirkuk have made sacrifices for the city, bulldozers now move on their houses and leave them without roofs or shelter.
A young man who took part in the protest described to Kurdistan24, what he called the crazy rise in market prices.
He pointed out that customs checkpoints set up around Kirkuk have forced eggs, chicken and daily necessities to be brought into the city through smuggling or bribes, doubling the price of all goods for citizens.
Demonstrators also voiced strong objection to the new oil sector contracts and to investing companies such as BP.
They said thousands of young people and university graduates in Kirkuk are unemployed, while the companies bring in foreign workers from Pakistan, India and other countries and pay them extravagant salaries, even though the city’s youth are ready to work for the lowest wages.
At the end of the gathering, the protesters stressed that the governor, the provincial council members and the parliamentarians have failed to meet the people’s demands and are concerned only with filling their own pockets.
As the only solution, they called for the formal dissolution of the Kirkuk provincial council and for negligent officials to be put on trial.