Government Departments for everything

While having oil is a wonderful thing, it also has a downside. After years of conflict and with oil money flowing in, one of the priorities of the Kurdish government was creating jobs and here that meant government jobs. Most people work for the Government in all its various forms and in Slemani that percentage is estimated to be around 70%. It is everyone's dream to get cushy job in a government department.

Government Departments are literally packed with people. The passport office is a sprawling complex of offices and public counters chocker with staff. Even the Asiash head office manages to squeeze five or six burly men in miniscule offices. What everyone does is anyone's guess and I suspect the systems are unnecessarily bureaucratic just to employ people.

Little is done to encourage the production or manufacture of anything and it is very rare to find any item in the shops made in Kurdistan. In Slemani manufacturing is confined to some cement and concrete products for construction, and other than that the main private enterprises are retail and service industries.  

With a security force of 175,000 made up of Police, Traffic Police, Asaish and Pershmerga (Army), it is much more appealing for rural young men to sign up for a life in uniform than a hard life working the land.

Of course with the government running out of money these last few months, the effect of civil servants not being paid or paid late has been devastating for the economy.