SANAA (Xinhua) – The
Sana’a-based government in Yemen has warned of an escalation of the tensions if the Saudi-backed forces in the south do not pay the salaries of civil servants in northern areas.
Abdulmalik al-Ajri, a member of the negotiating delegation, said that the situation has reached a critical point due to the issue of suspended salaries, which seriously threatens the fragile ceasefire in the country.
“The responsibility of the authority and the south rests with the responsibility of restoring the employees’ basic right to salaries,” the al Masirah TV quoted the official as saying on Friday.
Al-Ajri stressed that if the situation reaches a dead end, things will take an escalatory course, which they “do not wish for,” according to the report.
He called on the international community and the United Nations to realize that the issue of salaries has become a serious threat to the fragile ceasefire.
The process of paying the salaries of public sector employees in Yemen has stopped since 2016, as a result of the collapsing economic situation and the financial division between the north and the south.
The Sana’a-based government has recently been facing increasing demands and pressure as civil servants rallied to claim their overdue salaries.
Earlier this year, Sana’a rejected a proposal by Riyadh to transfer oil and gas revenues to the Saudi National Bank in return for the kingdom to pay public sector wages in Yemen.
Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, held the United States responsible for the hurdles created by Saudi Arabia in paying salaries of civil servants in the areas controlled by the Ansarullah movement.
Mashat also urged Washington not to make enemies among more than 10 million Yemeni public sector workers by preventing the payment of their wages.
Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and other Western states, launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015. It also imposed the most severe siege on Yemen, weakening the country’s economy.
Riyadh sought to crush Ansarullah and reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, but it failed to do achieve its objective.
The war, meanwhile, has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.