DRAW:

Teachers who are teaching at schools without having an official contract with the government start to protest and strike. They are asking the government to hire them officially.

In Kurdistan's reign of Iraq, there are 20 thousand unemployed teachers, who are teaching without a contract. Making a contract with this group of teachers will increase 4 billion dinars for the expense budget on government.

Who are these teachers without a contract? How much is their salary? How does the government handle this problem? Draw Media provides more information in this report.

Government Facing a New Dissatisfaction 

Approximately there are 20 thousand Unemployed teachers in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It has been for a few days they have started protests and strikes asking the government to hire them officially and make a contract with them.

In May of this year, this group of teachers had another protest asking for their payment, which was late for 5months. Unemployed teachers are going to be a new challenge for the new government cabinet which include (KDP, PUK, CHANGE MOVEMENT)

Who is an unemployed teacher?

Last year KRG decided to change 6,000 temporary contracts to permanent teachers. Before they get hired, they had been working for years as temporary teachers without having a fixed salary.

Since 2013, the hiring process in the public sector has been stopped because of the financial crisis, but the need of the education ministry for teachers obligated them to hire a big number of teachers temporarily without having a fixed salary. That was because of:

_ Increasing numbers of students and schools.

_Many of the previous teachers got retired.

To fill out those gaps ministry of education hired temporary teachers.

Based on the data that Draw Media has received; in 2019 there were 17,500 temporary teachers in the schools, but the number increased to 20,000 by 2021. The number of all teachers according to the ministry of education are 120 thousands, which means the temporary teachers are 20% of all teachers in the ministry of education. 

Most of the schools all over Kurdistan have temporary teachers. Even in some schools except the principal, all of the teachers are temporary. For example: In Sayd Sadiq Town, there are 1,200 permanent teachers with 490 temporary teachers. This means 40% of all of the Teachers in this Town are not hired permanently.

How much is the salary of the temporary teachers?

In the previous years, the temporary teachers were paid based on the number of hours they teach. Each teacher who had a Diploma degree would get 3000 dinars and for a bachelor's degree, they spend 4000 dinars.

Based on this fixed salary, now the expense of all the temporary teachers is 5 billion and 500 million dinars.

If the government decides to hire these 20 thousand teachers permanently, then the salary of those who have a diploma will be 450 bachelors will be 500 thousand dinars. And that would be 9 billion and 500 million dinars. This means the government needs 4 billion more to pay their salary.

With this extra, would the government decide to change their contract from temporary to permanent?