Rotten Baghdad Officials Exposed

Unscrupulous council staff are accused of striking illegal deals with private sector.

Baghdad municipal officials are being accused of illegally leasing out vehicles and plots of land to private companies in the city.

The authorities deny corruption is going on, but a government inspector has found evidence of unlawful practices.

Private contractors are said to be using municipality trucks together with their drivers because it’s much cheaper. Corrupt officials are believed to be charging only 100,000 dinars, or 68 US dollars, to rent out a bulldozer for a day. Hiring one from a private company costs around 100,000 dinars per hour.

Some drivers of council vehicles admit that they effectively have two jobs.

“I work here during formal working hours,” a local authority bulldozer driver, who does illegal private work on the side, told IWPR.

The alleged provision of vehicles and drivers at knockdown prices has been a boon for cash-strapped businesses in the city.

The owner of a real estate office in one Baghdad district said his firm would probably struggle to survive without the local authorities’ bulldozers.

In addition to claims that they’ve been unlawfully hiring out vehicles, municipal employees have been accused of the unauthorised leasing of plots of land for makeshift car showrooms.

Some car dealers that IWPR spoke to said that it was possible to rent plots from corrupt officials for about 20 to 30 million dinars.

There have also been reports of council employees seemingly doing unnecessary work, the suspicion being that somewhere down the line unscrupulous officials are benefiting.

For example, residents of Baghdad’s al-Waziriya neighbourhood were recently taken aback when they found local authority workers repaving a street that was already in good condition and clearly not in need of any repairs.

“I was surprised [because] our street is one of the best and tidiest in Baghdad,” said cab driver and al-Waziriya resident Ali Hussein.

When he asked one of the workers what they were up to, Hussein was told, “This is an order and we have to carry it out.”

A spokesman for the municipality Sabah Mahmood denied that corruption was taking place, “None of our employees can sign a contract [with a private firm] and those violating this will be dealt with according to the law.”

But Musa Faraj, inspector general of the government ministry responsible for municipalities, said he had found evidence of corrupt practices “committed by administrative employees, technicians and engineers”.

He added that the government was working to investigate and eliminate such cases, and those responsible would face criminal charges.

Yaseen al-Rubai’I is an IWPR trainee in Baghdad.