Iraq govt resumes salary payments in post-Daesh Nineveh

By Arif Yusuf and Ali Jawad

BAGHDAD

The government will resume paying the salaries of 767 state employees in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province following a three-year hiatus, according to a Tuesday statement issued by the Agriculture Ministry.

“Following the approval of Agriculture Minister Falah Hassan Zidan, the ministry has begun dispersing outstanding salary payments to 767 government employees in Nineveh after subjecting them all to security checks,” the statement read.

After the Daesh terrorist group overran Mosul, Nineveh’s provincial capital, in mid-2014, the Iraqi government stopped paying monthly salaries to all government employees within the city.

The government justified the move at the time by citing fears that the monies could end up in the hands of Daesh, promising to resume public-sector salary payments once the city was “liberated” by the Iraqi military and its allies.

Thousands of state-employed teachers in Nineveh, however, have yet to see their salary payments resumed despite Mosul’s recapture last month by the army, Mohamed al-Juboury, a member of the Iraqi Teachers Syndicate’s Nineveh branch, told Anadolu Agency on Monday.