MP urges more allocations for Kirkuk

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A Turkman parliamentarian from the Sadrist bloc on Sunday called to push up financial allocations for Kirkuk in 2009, citing “negligence” and lack of services in the province. “I call on the Iraqi government to increase the financial allocations for Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s three oil-rich cities, which suffers from negligence and lack of services,” MP Fawzi Akram, a representative of Kirkuk province in the Parliament, said today during a Baghdad-based press conference attended by IraqiNews.com. The parliamentarian did not disclose the amount of funds allocated for the province in 2009. The Sadrist bloc holds 29 seats in the 275-member Parliament. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SS (P) 1