Unpaid salaries, job demands drive Basra protests
Shafaq News- Basra
Education-sector workers and graduates staged separate protests in Iraq’s southern Basra province on Monday, pressing demands over unpaid salaries, employment and disputed hiring lists.
At the education-sector demonstration, several participants fainted as temperatures rose, with some taken to a nearby hospital, videos obtained by Shafaq News showed.
The protesters called for the prompt payment of salaries owed to some 10,000 contract workers and a resolution for 19,000 unpaid lecturers. Speaking with Shafaq News, Abu Al-Hassan Al-Shawi, a representative of the education protesters, also urged judicial and oversight authorities to investigate the employment lists, saying documents held by the demonstrators showed that more than 250 names from outside Basra had been added.
Meanwhile, engineering, petroleum and science graduates maintained an open-ended sit-in outside the Basra Oil Company, Iraqi Oil Tankers Company and Oil Products Distribution Company, seeking jobs suited to their qualifications.
Hassan Abdul Amir, a representative of the protesting graduates, said their campaign had continued for about a year and a half, spanning two successive governments “without substantive solutions.” The graduates have since escalated their action by blocking employees from entering the oil companies’ offices following earlier demonstrations and sit-ins that he said resulted in arrests and injuries among protesters.
Earlier today, employees of Basra’s state-owned fertilizer company protested plans to transfer one of its government-operated production lines to private investment, warning that the move could lead to job losses and lower state revenues.
