Teachers in Iraqi Kurdistan hold walkout over wages

Thousands of teachers in Iraqi Kurdistan region went on a strike Saturday in protest over unpaid wages.

Officials said the teachers walked out of schools to demand salaries that have been unpaid for months.

Activists said the strike was limited to the city of Sulaimaniyah where at least 50,000 people took part in the strike. The figure could also include other government employees, who like teachers, have gone unpaid since last September.

“The government did not pay any salary for the teachers of Kurdistan for four months,” said Singar Faeq, the deputy head of the Kurdistan Teachers' Union in Sulaimaniyah Province.

Ari Ahmed, the principle of a school in Sulaimaniyah, said the walkout will continue until the government responds to demands for paying salaries.

Authorities said they could not provide a figure on the number of teachers going on strike, but admitted they were many. Shorsh Ghafuri, an official in the Kurdish regional education ministry, said the regional government was still waiting for cash to pay teachers their full salaries.

Plummeting oil prices has hardly hit Iraqi Kurdistan, which like the capital, Baghdad, heavily relies on oil income to provide the majority of its funds.

The regional government is also busy fighting the militants of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in northern Iraqi territories, with its armed Peshmerga units needing huge resources to finance the campaign.

Many also blame the Kurdistan government’s independent selling of oil, which has been criticized by Baghdad, as a reason for its financial woes as the body could keep itself afloat by having access to loans and bond markets with the authorization of the central government.

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