Sunday, January 08, 2023

1/4 of Iraqis live in poverty

Last week, John Lee (OZ ARAB MEDIA) noted:


The Iraqi Minister of Oil, Hayan Abdul-Ghani, has announced revenues of more than $115 billion from exporting crude oil for the year 2022.

More than 1,209 billion barrels of crude oil were exported, giving a daily export rate is approximately 3.320 million barrels per day (bpd).


ARABIAN BUSINESS noted, "This is a four-year high following a collapse in prices during the Covid-19 pandemic."  But it means nothing for the Iraqi people because the US-installed government in Iraq has never attempted to better the lives of the Iraqi people.  Nouri al-Maliki and his family got rich after the 2003 invasion, it was the Iraqi people who struggled.  Jobs are nowhere to be found and politicians and officials steal the public monies.  There's no investment in infrastructure.  There's no investment in the people.  That's what The October Revolution was protesting against: corruption that destroyed not just the chances of the young people but the entire country.  Iraq is one of the most corrupt countries in the world as ranked by Transparency International.  Today, RUDAW reports:


Over a thousand people held a demonstration before the Iraqi finance ministry on Sunday demanding permanent employment at the Shiite Endowment Office and their inclusion in the 2023 Iraqi national fiscal budget.

The protesters, some of whom have been working with the Shiite endowment by contract for the past 15 years, called on the government to make their employment permanent.

“We ask for permanent employment. Three generations of the rest of the directorates have been granted permanent employment, but we have not been until now,” Ahmad Abdulrahman, who has been working with the office for the past 13 years, told Rudaw’s Mustafa Goran, calling on Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani to address their concerns, saying “we are tired, and we have had enough.”

The total number of those who are contract-based with the Shiite Endowment Office is around 7,000, working a variety of jobs including guarding holy shrines, doing media work, cooking, and running administrative affairs.  
This is the third protest of its kind that they have held in the course of the past two months, but they have not yet received any answer from the government.

At least three.  Last week, RUDAW noted:


At least five people were wounded in Kirkuk on Monday as police applied force to disperse hundreds of angry demonstrators who protested the lack of employment by the North Oil Company (NOC) and tried to storm its headquarters.

A total of 1350 college graduates received a six-month-long training course by the state-run NOC four years ago, but have not yet been employed. Of this number, Over 450 of them staged an angry protest on Monday.

A protester told Rudaw that Baghdad already consented to employ 458 of the trained graduates, but they were not true to their words and that they employed other people instead of them.


And Chenar Chalak (RUDAW) reported:

Hundreds of recently graduated teachers who have been working without receiving payments for years gathered in Kirkuk on Wednesday to protest their lack of contractual employment, calling on the Iraqi government to address their concerns. 

Iraq’s Education Minister Ibrahim Namis al-Jubouri announced on Tuesday that the council of ministers has agreed to include teachers of the graduating class of 2020 in the 2023 budget, granting them employment by contract. The decision does not include graduates from any other year, many of whom have been teaching free of charge and without contracts for years.

“We teach at schools without any privileges… Yesterday evening, a decision was issued to employ graduates of 2020, we are graduates of 2019, 2021, 2022 and we are still waiting… We have been teaching for free for two years,” one of the protesters told Rudaw’s Hiwa Hussamadin.

Most graduates resort to teaching for free hoping it would lead to full-time employment.


The protests come as IANS notes, "The Iraqi Ministry of Planning has said that the poverty rate in the country was 25 per cent in 2022, the Iraqi official news agency reported."

Meanwhile Sheri Laizer (EKURD DAILY) explains:

In October 2022, some US$2.5 billion went missing from the General Commission of Taxes (GCT) – one of the accounts of the Finance Ministry. The money was withdrawn in several enormous cheques for approx. $1 million each but with at least one written for as large a sum as $62 million. Finance Minister, Ali Allawi, resigned citing corruption as the cause. The largest financial heist so far in Iraq’s history, government officials colluded with the Rafidain state–owned bank and five private companies three of which were newly set up and can have been shell companies. The massive theft became public knowledge just one week into the new premiership of Mohamed al-Sudani.

The Guardian appears to have first headlined how the scheme was devised but did not name the key protagonist. He has since been exposed or scapegoated by numerous Arabic media outlets and social media as Noor Zuhair Jassim al-Mudather. But officials from the Badr militia organization under Hadi al-Ameri ‘s leadership in the Ministry of Finance are also said to have been complicit. On this subject the Guardian also noted:

“Accomplices inside the tax commission had signing authority for the cheques that were then cashed. The network was put in place by its former director, Shaker Mahmoud, according to four sources inside the finance ministry. Based on the letter from the prime minister’s office and a phone call with the audit chamber, Mahmoud ordered the removal of the audit, according to a document seen by the Guardian.”…Shaker Mahmoud and the executors of the plot were supported by the Badr Organisation that controls senior appointments to the tax and customs commissions, according to seven sources.

In addition, directors had to be approved by the prime minister, as per a 2020 decree…While the then finance minister, Ali Allawi, signed the paperwork for appointments, sources in the finance ministry said he had little authority over staffing. Two of his nominees turned down director positions after they received threats from Badr. “Allawi couldn’t remove anyone because Badr wouldn’t accept. And he didn’t get support from the prime minister’s office,” said one official.”


The following sites updated:





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