Parliament informs the government of its refusal on cutting employees and retiree’s salaries

Shafaq News / The Presidency of the Iraqi parliament informed on Wednesday the government of its refusal to deduct the salaries of employees and retirees.

First Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Hassan Karim Al-Kaabi called on Wednesday Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to dismiss the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Finance, Taif Sami "for not respecting the parliament and affecting the rights of the Iraqi people negatively.”

The Parliamentary Finance Committee held a meeting today to discuss deducting a percentage of the employees and retiree’s salaries in the presence of the Minister of Finance, the President of the Central Bank and Director of the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance.

In a statement received to Shafaq News, Al-Kaabi called on the Parliamentary Finance Committee to clarify its position regarding deduction of employees and retiree’s salaries as well as compensatory salaries for the families of martyrs and political prisoners.

The Parliamentary Finance Committee held a meeting today to discuss deducting a percentage of the salaries of employees and retirees in the presence of the Minister of Finance , the President of the Central Bank and Director of the Budget Department at the Ministry of Finance.

For its part, Badr Parliamentary Bloc announced today that it stands against the decision of the government of Mustafa Al-Kadhimi to deduct part of the salaries of employees and retirees, while submitted three proposals to the government to address this crises.

The head of Badr Parliamentary Bloc,Hassan Shaker Al-Kaabi said in a press conference held at the Parliament Building with the participation of representatives of the bloc and attended by Shafaq News Agency’s reporter, that "we are all aware of the difficulty and magnitude of the challenge facing the government due to the financial, economic and health crisis, and we are well aware that these crises need exceptional efforts and difficult solutions to overcome. "

"But we believe that focusing on solutions by delaying the payment of salaries for the poor classes of retirees or deduct the salaries of families of martyrs and political prisoners is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to proceed regardless of the challenges, because those segments have given the most precious time of their lives and their sons for the sake of Iraq so the government must to provide them with a decent living, not the other way around. "

"As a matter of national, ethical and legal responsibility, we call on the government to focus in its efforts on collecting financial sums that will be sufficient to bridge the financial deficit by imposing its control on border crossings and activating taxes on commercial sectors, hotels, tourist facilities, and tax collection services, in addition to moving the external effort to recover its money seized in other countries to benefit from it at this stage instead of searching for proposals in which the victim to be the simple citizen,” Al-Kaabi added.

While the Prime Minister's advisor for financial affairs, Mathehar Muhammad Salih, announced that the applicable income tax will be applied to the total salary instead of the nominal starting from the current month.

 The semi-official newspaper, Al-Sabah, was quoted in its issue released today by Saleh as saying that the income tax law is on the nominal salary and now it will be applied to the total salary, that is, the nominal with the allocations, indicating that the income tax law is fixed and deductions range between 10 to 15 % for all employees.

Saleh added that the proposals issued regarding deduction of salaries have been canceled, but salaries will be dealt with according to the income tax with exceptions to that, as this law will not include those whose salaries are less than 500 thousand dinars, indicating that the matter was discussed, but wasn’t issued formally yet, and the government is working hard to provide the salaries for the current month of June.

The Iraqi economy has taken an overwhelming hit in recent months. Measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have severely impacted the finances of both private businesses and public institutions. While oil prices have also dropped significantly over the past several months, all impacted the country’s income.