Rudaw.com

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – For the past decade Kirkuk has remained one of Iraq’s deadliest cities, but its governor says that since his election two years ago much has changed, including better security, more jobs and longer hours of electricity.

“Electricity has improved, unemployment rates have dropped and a large number of people have been employed with the money that used to be returned to Baghdad,” governor Najmaldin Karim said in an interview with Rudaw.

Over the past decade the multiethnic province has witnessed some of the deadliest attacks by Islamist and other insurgent groups. Most recently a car bomb, targeting officials of the city’s Turkmen Front in Tuz Khurmatu, killed its deputy chief and several others.

But Karim, 64, said that the police and security forces are in a constant fight with those groups in order to improve the province’s security and stability. He said things had improved since the capture of senior leaders of Al-Qaeda and other extremist Sunni groups in southern Iraq.

Karim said that a project is underway to dig a three-meter by two-meter trench around Kirkuk to prevent bombers from infiltrating the city. “Digging the trenches has made a huge difference,” he said. “I am sure the security situation will be much better after its completion.”

Kirkuk is at the heart of a stretch of so-called disputed territories claimed by the autonomous Kurds in the north and the Iraqi central government. The Iraqi constitution stipulates that only the people of Kirkuk can decide through a referendum whether the province should be attached to the Kurdish regions or remain under central government control.

Karim, a native of Kirkuk, said he has tried to curb the interference of Kurdish political parties in his work and that jobs are given based on merit, not nepotism or contacts.

He also described his relations with the city’s Arab and Turkmen ethnic groups as “excellent.” He said, “We have good relations with their leaders, too.”

In the Rudaw interview, Karim dismissed a report by a local newspaper that he had sole control over the province’s share of oil money, and that he had awarded some companies with millions of dollars for contracts.

“The petrodollar budget is sent from Baghdad based on project proposals,” he said. “The governor does not control this budget.”

He said that even the budget to build the governor’s office comes from the Ministry of Planning, and in instalments.

The governor said that in the past two years he has rooted out certain local officials who used to award project contracts to companies in which they had shares.  He added that that this year alone, he has blacklisted more than 10 companies.

A senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Karim said he was elected governor based on an agreement between his party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

However, he said he maintains good relations with all parties in the province, including the opposition.“ I am the governor of all Kirkukis,” he said. “I am not the governor for any certain political party.”

Karim said that Kurdish officials in Erbil can prove their claims that Kirkuk is a Kurdish city by giving its people the right to vote in the region’s parliamentary elections and the writing of the draft constitution.

“The people of Kirkuk and other Kurdish cities outside of the Kurdistan Region should have a say,” he said. “That is because this (Kurdish) parliament makes decisions for the whole population of South Kurdistan.”

“Not only the Kurds in these areas, but the Arabs and Turkmen too have the right to vote on the Kurdistan constitution,” he added.