KRG Deputy PM visits Al-Sulaymaniyah hunger strikers, promises salary solution
Shafaq News / On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region, Qubad Talabani, visited hunger-striking teachers and public employees in Al-Sulaymaniyah to assess their health conditions and listen to their grievances.
Sources reported that Talabani arrived at the protest site early in the morning, when some of the demonstrators were still resting due to exhaustion from the ongoing strike.
During his visit, Talabani expressed his support for the protesters' demands and even presented his personal coat to one teacher to help her stay warm in the cold weather. He assured the demonstrators that the salary issue for 2025 had been resolved and that Baghdad would ensure the timely monthly payment of all employee salaries. The strike—now in its 13th day and involving 12 teachers and public employees—aims to secure salary payments and improvements to living conditions.
In a further escalation, some employees from Al-Sulaymaniyah traveled to Erbil on Sunday to support the strikers' demands.
The protests come amid a severe salary crisis in the Kurdistan Region, where unpaid public sector wages for December 2024 and January 2025 have sparked widespread unrest. The dispute is rooted in ongoing political tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil and the federal government in Baghdad.
Central to the dispute is a disagreement over oil revenue sharing. While Baghdad insists that the KRG must transfer all oil production to the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO), thereby channeling revenues into the national treasury to fund salaries and production costs, the KRG contends that it should deduct production costs before remitting the remaining revenues.
