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- WEDNESDAY, 04-10-2023, PM 10:27
- KARAR AL-ASSADI
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Almost no public or private company in Iraq is devoid of foreign workers, at a time when unemployment rates are rising among Iraqi youth, and in Wasit Governorate, the scene of dozens of graduates of petroleum specializations and others gathering in front of oil fields to demand opportunities is repeated, at a time when these fields contain hundreds of workers. Foreign.
Anas Amer (25 years old), a petroleum engineering graduate, says, “Thousands of Iraqi students graduate every year from dozens of public and private universities across the country, but then they begin the journey of searching for a job opportunity, especially since the private sector has almost stopped, so attention turns to the government sector.” .
Regarding the stand of Amer and his colleagues in front of an oil field to demand appointment, he explains, “We stand every day in front of the Ahdab oil field since we graduated 3 years ago, and we all took tests for working in the oil sector, but our transactions were not completed, and the workers in the oil sector did not move to appoint us.”
A member of the Oil and Energy Committee, former MP Sadiq Al-Sulaiti, revealed that the contracts for licensing rounds included a clause of “Indianization” which means replacing foreign labor with Iraqi labor, and developing the capabilities of youth in Iraq, but despite the high operating costs and the disbursement of high sums of money that the licenses are witnessing, This paragraph has not been implemented as required, as companies operating in the cities of southern Iraq still include approximately 100,000 foreign workers of more than 105 nationalities.
Not far from Amer, Haider Al-Shammari (33 years old), a resident of Al-Husseiniyah district in the governorate, explains, “The field, according to my daily monitoring of it, due to my proximity to it, includes hundreds of foreign workers in it, amid a small number of local workers.”
Al-Shammari calls on the government to “reconsider the recruitment mechanisms for all segments, whether graduates, holders of simple certificates, or craftsmen.”
Official figures are conflicting regarding the number of foreign workers. While the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced last January that their number reached only 4,000 workers, the former Minister of Labor, Bassem Abdel Zaman, revealed in 2019 that the number of foreign workers reached 750,000, but according to a committee Previous Labor and Social Affairs in Parliament There are about 1.5 million foreign workers in Iraq.
Regarding this matter, the Governor of Wasit, Muhammad Al-Mayahi, comments, “There was a measure taken recently, which included referring this file to the Integrity Commission due to the lack of transparency in the appointment mechanism for foreigners, in addition to diagnosing cases of duplication between government and private work in the oil sector for Iraqi employees.”
Al-Mayahi explains that “the only cooperation between the governorate and the Central Oil Company regarding the issue of appointments is limited to providing the governorate’s employment office with some job grades in the oil fields by the company, which do not exceed 5 job grades per month only,” stressing that “the company’s announcement of no “The percentage of foreign workers in the oil fields exceeding 20 percent is not true, as the real number is greater than this.”
Statistics issued by the World Bank revealed that the level of unemployment in Iraq reached 13.7 percent, which is the highest rate since 1991, which was confirmed by the spokesman for the Ministry of Planning, Abdul Zahra Al-Hindawi, indicating that the poverty rate in Iraq also witnessed an increase during the past year to reach 31.7, but it decreased slightly this year to reach 30 percent.
Badra oil field, east of the center of Wasit Governorate, and operated by a Russian company, also did not seek to provide job opportunities for those living near it, according to Muhammad Al-Khalidi.
Al-Khalidi (29 years old) explains that “the change that occurred in the judiciary after the work of the oil field was the increase in the prices of rent allowances due to the presence of families of workers in the field who came from outside the governorate, in addition to the increase in the prices of other consumables.”
He continues: “I applied to work more than once in the Badra field, and I received many promises of appointment from candidates, but these promises turned out to be false. Rather, what happened was an increase in the number of foreign workers.”
Last year, the Chinese PetroChina oil company operating in Maysan Governorate threatened to withdraw from the governorate or from the whole country, after demonstrations against it in Al-Kahla district, where residents at the time demanded that the company provide electricity and drinking water.
The southern governorates, which include oil fields, often witness demonstrations by residents of villages and districts near the sites of companies and oil fields, demanding that their children be appointed to companies and provide services to their areas.
There are more than 55,000 unemployed craftsmen in Wasit, hoping to obtain a job opportunity, as confirmed by the head of the Federation of Trade Unions in the governorate, Karim Al-Atabi.
Al-Atabi points out that “these numbers were distributed among 6 unions in the union, but in contrast, the union does not have any accurate statistics for the numbers of foreign workers present in the governorate,” adding that “the legal representative of the union received dozens of legal cases related to the dismissal of workers from the oil fields of Without receiving their monthly dues, in addition to other lawsuits related to non-fulfillment of the obligations contracted by these companies.”
In addition, Hussein Mardan, representative of the province, points out that “the work of foreign companies in accordance with contracts with the Iraqi authorities includes their obligation to participate with Iraqi cadres, starting from the stages of exploration and drilling, all the way to the stages of production.”
He continues, "The establishment of the Wasit Investment Refinery, which was announced by the Ministry of Oil to obtain final approvals for its establishment in the governorate, will contribute to providing job opportunities for more than 6,000 citizens."
The contracts for the oil licensing rounds that were signed in 2009 stipulated that each company would allocate $5 million annually to be spent on service projects in the districts and areas surrounding the oil field, under the name “social benefits.”
Press reports in 2020 revealed that there was $42 million owed by the Chinese company that it had not paid to spend on the landscaping, which is the value of social benefits, and this money had been owed since 2013.
The issue of social benefit amounts is one of the thorniest issues in Iraq, especially since most of the southern cities where oil companies are located have not received the amounts allocated to them in full, as a result of disagreements between local governments and companies over the mechanism for disbursing these amounts.
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