Iraqi contractors postpone protest over unpaid dues in support of anti-corruption drive

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s contractors have postponed a nationwide protest over unpaid government dues in a show of support for Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s anti-corruption campaign, while renewing their demand that the state settle 41 trillion dinars in arrears built up since 2014.

Ali al-Sanafi, head of the Iraqi Contractors Union, said the demonstration set for July 7 was called off after the government launched its sweeping campaign against current and former officials. “It was planned that all Iraqi contractors would hold a demonstration, but we were surprised by the decisive decisions and steps taken by the prime minister to eliminate corruption,” al-Sanafi told Alawla TV. “We are the group most harmed by the corrupt and extortionists, and we postponed this demonstration in support of the prime minister’s measures.”

Al-Sanafi said contractors were owed 41 trillion dinars accumulated since the 2014 financial crisis and that the sum should be paid in full, but that Zaidi could not be blamed for a backlog that predates his two months in office. The crisis was worsening, he said, because the state lacked liquidity, with Iraq’s debt burden and the halt to oil exports after the Strait of Hormuz closure straining finances further. He suggested the government’s remaining options were to borrow and issue bonds to cover part of the payments.

The Finance Ministry recently released about 300 billion dinars to several governorates toward older debts, al-Sanafi said, but he called it far too little: Basra alone is owed 1.8 trillion dinars, he said, and received just 50 billion from the latest allocation. He blamed years of delay on bureaucracy and corruption, saying Cabinet decisions to compensate contractors for earlier crises had gone unimplemented since 2017, often stalling with lower-level officials despite approval at the top.

Al-Sanafi rejected a proposal by officials to cut some contract values by 30% over suspected price inflation. “The contract is the law between the contracting parties,” he said, calling forced reductions impossible, though he said contractors might accept lower payments voluntarily in exchange for incentives such as priority on future projects or faster settlement of claims. He said contractors welcomed scrutiny of the arrears. “It is the state’s right to audit and form investigative committees, and we welcome the punishment of anyone proven to have wasted public money,” he said. “The money belongs to the people, not to a minister or governor.” He called for a joint committee, with a private-sector majority, to set a clear timetable for paying the dues.

The campaign, known as “Dawn Strike,” targeted current and former officials in coordinated raids across Baghdad’s Green Zone, and Zaidi has said it will continue as investigations widen. Contractors have long pressed over delayed payments; earlier this year their unions put the nationwide total owed at about 30 trillion dinars, while the Finance Ministry said it had allocated 2 trillion toward arrears.