Shingal residents, officials decry meagre IDP compensation package

SHINGAL, Iraq Sabri Badal, a Yezidi woman, has returned to her village of Shorka in Shingal six years after being displaced. She sits idly by watching her damaged house.

The Iraqi government is providing IDP households a mere 1.5 million Iraqi dinars ($1,258) each to restore their lives in their places of origin, according to Ali Omer, the Assistant Governor of Nineveh province.  This figure does not come close to covering the costs of home reparations for most.

By God, 1,500,000 [dinars] does not suffice. We cannot even pay the workers with this amount of money. Our house is destroyed. Our men are gone. Nothing is left behind, Badal told Rudaw on Tuesday. After returning to Shingal, Shukri Jamil, built a new house from scratch. He says he has spent 25,000,000 dinars on the building of the house, after having found his 60,000,000 dinar house destroyed following ISIS’s brutal takeover of Shingal.

We lost our cars, our houses were destroyed, we lost our sheep. What can we do with 1,500,000? This is not a solution, said Jamil. Nineveh’s Assistant Governor says that he will protest the amount to the Minister of Displacement and Migration. This is a very little amount of money, Omer claimed, adding that around 10,000 people from Shingal have so far applied for compensation from the Iraqi government.

Over the past six years, the Iraqi government has not paid Shingal's budget, with the de facto mayor describing it as a major issue hindering the reconstruction of the area.

Fahd Hamo, who was appointed mayor by Shingal’s Autonomous Council , a civil administration formed by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) affiliated groups to govern the district, after elected mayor Mahma Khalil fled the area, says the area not receiving its share of the federal budget has hindered reconstruction initiatives.

We have not received the budgets of the years of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and up until now, said Hamd, whose administration is not recognized by the federal government. We are calling on the Iraqi government to pay us the past years' budgets, because Shingal, the city and its surroundings, have seen massive destruction and difficulties.