Iraqi retirees are angry about delayed salaries and threaten to protest.
Iraqi retirees are angry about delayed salaries and threaten to protest.
2025-09-04 02:40
Shafaq News – Baghdad
A large number of Iraqi retirees threatened on Thursday to stage a demonstration to protest the delay in their salaries, holding the Ministry of Finance and the Retirement Authority responsible for the delay.
A retiree named Jamil Ahmed told Shafaq News Agency, “In all countries, retirees live with dignity and honor, enjoying privileges such as health cards and travel. However, in Iraq, retirees live in humiliation, waiting for their monthly salary, which is not enough for treatment or other basic necessities.” He added, “Even this salary has been delayed for days.”
He continued, “The government always says that salaries are secure and cannot be touched, yet at the same time claims that a lack of cash flow is the reason for not distributing salaries.”
Meanwhile, retiree Abu Haidar Al-Khaza’i told Shafaq News Agency, “The failure to distribute retirees’ salaries indicates a disastrous failure by the Ministry of Finance and the non-national Retirement Authority. Furthermore, the statements made by members of the Finance Committees in the House of Representatives, obligating the Ministry of Finance to distribute salaries and not delay them, are nothing more than empty words.”
He stressed that “our salaries are not a favor from anyone, but rather the right of retirees,” noting that “if they are not distributed today, retirees from all governorates will demonstrate to demand the payment of salaries and to prevent them from being delayed again.”
Al-Khazai asked, “Why wasn’t borrowing from government banks to pay salaries better than a single installment of 21 billion dinars from the Riyada Initiative?”
For his part, economic expert Durgham Mohammed Ali told Shafaq News Agency, “The issue of salaries is linked to the available liquidity, which is linked to the volume of oil revenues and the volume of dollar sales through the currency window, which provide liquidity, and the volume of demand for treasury transfers offered by the Ministry of Finance to finance the deficit in current expenditures. These are all factors that affect the balance of the financial basket.”
Ali added that “the lack of planning and economic alternatives led to these developments,” predicting that the crisis would recur every month, even with employee salaries.
Informed sources revealed that the roots of the crisis lie in the United States’ reduction of the financial share allocated to Iraq through the Federal Reserve, in addition to the decline in oil prices and the absence of any real economic alternatives. These factors have left the government facing a fatal liquidity gap, while retirees pay the direct price of the financial deficit and external dependency.
Earlier on Thursday, the Parliamentary Finance Committee revealed the reason for the delay in disbursing retirees’ salaries, announcing that they would be disbursed by the middle of next week.
Committee member Moeen Al-Kadhimi told Shafaq News Agency, “The Ministry of Finance will begin funding the salaries of employees and retirees starting on the 20th of each month, and the amounts will be gradually deposited into the accounts of these ministries until the end of the month.”
He added, “The Ministry of Finance is funding the Retirement Authority in one payment for nearly three million retirees, with an amount amounting to 1.5 trillion dinars, 500 billion of which comes from retirement deductions, and the remaining 1 trillion from the Ministry of Finance’s revenues.”
This comes after an informed source reported on Wednesday that the disbursement of retirees’ salaries had been postponed until further notice.
The source told Shafaq News Agency that the salaries of civilian and military retirees for the current month of September have been postponed until further notice due to a lack of financial liquidity. He expected the salaries to be distributed at the beginning of next week.
He added, “It would have been more appropriate for the Ministry of Finance to borrow from government banks to cover the salaries of retirees who are in dire need of them, rather than granting loans under the so-called ‘initiative.'”
He pointed out that “the General Retirement Authority had announced four days ago a statement regarding the completion of the disbursement of retirees’ salaries for the current month of September, but that funding has not yet been received.” He noted that “retirees have what is known as a retirement fund, and the lack of financial liquidity is not supposed to affect it.”
shafaq.com
