On Monday, Feb 1, the co-leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Lahur Talabany, met up with the presidents of all the public and private universities in the province of Slemani, Halabja and the administrations of Garmian and Rapareen.

During the meeting, the political and economic situation and the matter of the development of the education process at the scientific and academic centers were discussed.

"We thanked the university presidents and through them we thanked all the teachers and employees for their patience, who despite being unpaid and the continuing crises, have not allowed the education process to be delayed and have continued to carry out their duties faithfully." Lahur Talabany wrote in his Facebook account.

He added, "We reaffirmed our support for the independence of universities and expressed our concern about centralization and monopoly of their scientific and administrative regulations and decisions and stated that in the context of implementing the system of decentralization, some of the financial and administrative authorities should be devolved to the universities for them to facilitate their affairs, raise the scientific level at universities and pay more attention to scientific research. We talked about the current sensitive situation and emphasized that the priority of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is to implement a decentralized system in all provinces of the Kurdistan Region and to provide salaries and that these are two important issues that we have taken steps towards."

Moreover, Lahur Talabany emphasized that implementing a decentralized system will lead to economic and political stability and any delay in implementing the system will lead to instability, which will harm the citizens of our region before anything else. He stressed that "the guarantee of the salaries of our citizens and the salaries of the civil servants depends on the agreement between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Federal Government and a resolution to the outstanding issues between them, with support for passing the section that is specific to the Kurdistan Region's budget share in the general budget bill for 2021 that is currently being discussed in the Iraqi House of Representatives."

He listened to the views and opinions of the university presidents and agreed on all the issues and reaffirmed his support for their legitimate demands.

Edited by: PUKNOW