Samir Hawrami: Tell us to attend government meetings after you've resolved the salary issues

Kurdistan 11:20 AM - 2023-04-27

Samir Hawrami, spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani.

The spokesperson for Qubad Talabani, Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region, said that the demands of the ministerial team of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are public demands, and addressing the financial issues and salaries of Sulaymaniyah employees is on top of the requests of the PUK team.

Samir Hawrami, the spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, told PUKMEDIA: "We have asked for addressing the salary issue of Sulaymaniyah, then talk about the return of the PUK team to the government meetings as salaries should not be tangled with political conflicts."

"Sulaymaniyah has a deficit of 30 to 32 billion dinars in salaries; we have asked not to tangle the issue of salaries with political conflicts," he added.

"The demands of the PUK are public demands; the major demand of the PUK is to make salaries a sovereign issue in the Kurdistan Region because salaries cannot be delivered in one governorate without simultaneously being provided in another governorate or region," stated Hawrami.

In response to the Ministry of Finance's assertion that there is prejudice in the salary distribution in Sulaymaniyah, Hawrami stated: "There is a problem of lack of revenue in Sulaymaniyah. In addition to the Gulan and September Peshmerga's pay, the salaries distributed to municipalities and the Ministry of Construction and Housing have also been halted.

"Since November of last year, we have presented a report on the resolution of financial problems in Sulaymaniyah governorate and the entire Kurdistan Region," he continued. "We are awaiting the report's response, but because the pertinent authorities have not yet given any response, we are not hopeful that the Ministry of Finance will visit to address the issue."

"We have emphasized time and time again that the revenue generated by the border crossings at Ibrahim Khalil and Parwez Khan cannot be compared, and it is clear that Sulaymaniyah's revenue is lower than that of other regions," he said.  

PUKMEDIA