Sulaymaniyah Striking Teachers & Employees Refuse Medical Treatment

Agencies

Iraqi Parliament delegation visiting the strikers.

After ten days of hunger strike, striking teachers and civil servants in Sulaymaniyah have upscaled their protest by refusing medical treatment, declaring: "Our fate is in our and the people's hands and no one can decide on our behalf," while demanding the distribution of civil servants' December salaries.

The striking teachers and public employees announced during a press conference on Friday, 7 February 2025: "Although the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is directly involved in the issue, it remains silent. On the contrary, the government spokesperson delivered the government's message about us in inappropriate terms, showing that the lives of 13 citizens are worthless to the government."

"We demand the KRG to distribute the salaries of December last year and we will not break the strike without tangible achievements," they said.

"We will continue our strike and refuse medical treatment from today and no one can decide on our behalf," the strikers said.

Dr. Sabah Hawrami, director of Sulaymaniyah Health Directorate, warned of the severe health risks this decision entails. 

“A new phase will begin for the strikers today. They will lose weight, and all their body organs will become weak,” he stated during a press conference on the same day.

Expressing deep concern, Hawrami urged the strikers to reconsider their decision. 

“We ask the strikers to continue receiving medical treatment because not receiving treatment poses a serious threat to their lives,” he said.

Although the KRG Minister of Finance and Economy announced last week that they have addressed the issue of the Kurdistan Region's civil servant salaries with Baghdad and that salary distribution will no longer be delayed, the strikers insist that they will not end their strikes unless they see tangible results. 

A coalition of educators and government employees have been staging a sit-in outside the United Nations office in Sulaymaniyah since 10 January 2025. Thirteen of them, including 3 women, went on a hunger strike since then, staying under a set-up tent in freezing cold weather. 

The strikers are demanding for no more delays in salary distribution, Nationalisation (Tawtin) of civil servant salaries in the Kurdistan Regions, as well as financial and administrative rights, as they are holding the KRG accountable for decade-long inconsistent salary payments, with many months over the years still unpaid. The KRG has began distributing January salaries following agreement with Baghdad, skipping salaries of last December.

Nationalisation or Tawtin is the Iraqi Government's initiative to pay civil servant salaries through bank accounts. The initiative is aimed at modernising Iraq's financial infrastructure and boosting transparency in the public sector payroll system.

The Kurdistan Region's Prime Minister announced MyAccount as an alternative for Baghdad's Tawtin in 2023. However, civil servants in the Kurdistan Region support Tawtin because they are doubtful of the KRG's ability to pay the salaries sent by Baghdad to the Region's civil servants.

Earlier in the day, a senior delegation from the Iraqi Parliament, consisting of most of the parliamentary blocs, visited the strikers, pledging to take their demands to Baghdad and to return with solutions.

Iraqi Parliament MP Yousef al-Kalabi said during a press conference: "We have received the protestors' requests and will take them to Baghdad and the Council of Representatives (Iraqi Parliament). We will form a parliamentary committee to look into the differences between the Kurdistan Region and the federal government, and we will inform the public as to who is responsible for the disruption in the payment of civil servant salaries, so that citizens are no longer victims of political conflicts."

MP Kalabi continued: "We will soon return to the sit-in strikers with solutions soon, God willing. The people of Kurdistan have conveyed to us their demands regarding settlement and providing salaries, and we praise the people of Sulaymaniyah for their struggle and steadfastness in demanding civil servants' rights and salary provision over the years."

After that, Harem Kamal Agha, head of the PUK bloc in the Iraqi Parliament, gave a speech in which he said: "We ask the strikers terminate it for their own health since they have become the trailblazers for the fundamental solution of the budget amendment, the agreement between the KRG and the Iraqi federal government, and the resolution of a part of the salary issue for 2025."

"We promise them that we will monitor the implementation of their other demands," he added.

Bafel Jalal Talabani, President of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), previously visited the strikers, showing support for their efforts.  The PUK's Political Bureau also reaffirmed support for the striking teachers, stating that the PUK genuinely supports all of the rightful demands made by Kurdistan's teachers and all the other segments, emphasising that the civil struggle and demands of the teachers are Kurdistani and Iraqi demands, and their resolution must also be nationwide, as well as accompanied by a joint concern from the regional and federal governments, because it is not legitimate to hold  the people as hostages of the anxiety from worrying about the arrival or non-arrival of an ordinary citizen entitlement.



PUKMEDIA