The government of Iraqi Kurdistan Region (KRG) announced a new digital service to pay its employees. My account initiative is financial inclusion program for public sector employees and pensioners.
In a statement Masrour Barzani confirmed that In the coming days, KRG would pilot the initiative by paying salaries to nearly 850 employees of Erbil’s Children and Maternity Hospital using electronic transfers to new digitally enabled bank accounts.
Also, the Kurdish PM expressed his gratitude to the Ministry of Finance and Economy for their support in launching the initiative and driving transformative reforms forward.
“My Account” is the latest digital portal launched to provide a safe, transparent, and convenient way for government employees and public sector workers.
Kurdaily team has learned that pensioners will benefit from the service as well.
KRG’s workers will be able to access their salaries through a network of ATMs that will grow to cover over 1,000 locations in the Kurdistan Region.
Additionally, the public sector employees will benefit from “My Account” initiative by accessing to all banking services such as personal loans and savings.
The public sector employees get benefit from the domestic and international transfers, international cash withdrawals, and online and digital payments as well.
Though, this program will have a great impact on modernisation banking sector, accelerating digital transformation, and growth of KRG’s economy.
Therefore, the service will greatly reduce the dependency on cash transactions. And it will increase government efficiency and transparency.
In addition to the other digital services, My account initiative is one of the most important steps by KRG to reduce corruption.
Before launching the service, employees and public sector workers had many issues with cash payment systems.
The issues were delay in payment and losing small amount of salary, and staying in long queues while receiving salaries.
The KRG reforms
My Account service is part of the KRG reform process to reduce corruption in cash payment and other governmental services.
Since the beginning of the ninth cabinet of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the government has launched several measures and processes to purge corruption and routine.
These measures include digitizing government work and establishing paperless government. And organising the tax system and diversifying government’s revenues, and increasing non-oil revenue.
Last week, as a first step to digitize public services, the KRG launched E-visa portal to attract more visitors and increase tourism revenues.
After the announcement of My Account initiative, many banks announced their support for the initiative and decided to provide all facilities for the employees to receive their salaries by Bank cards.
Although electronic payments aren’t very developed in Kurdistan and most transactions are done in cash, but the KRG has decided to pay employees bank cards within two years.
According to a source in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the government may give employees a special course on how to use bank cards before starting electronic payments. As most of the the employees are unfamiliar with bank cards. Meanwhile Iraq government has been paying its employees by smart cards for five years.
