Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Government Taliban Afghanistan will begin paying salaries of government employees that are due from Saturday, local officials said.
Salaries must be paid for at least three months for thousands of Afghan government employees. Even before the Taliban took control in August, many public sector workers said their salaries had not been paid for weeks.
The inability to pay salaries is one of many crises the Taliban have faced since the Islamist movement took over the country in August.
“The finance ministry said, starting today, the last three months the salaries of all government employees and staff will be paid in full,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Twitter.
Unclear source of funds
However, it is not clear where the source of the funds to pay the salaries of the employees came from.
The reason is, after the Taliban took power, billions of dollars in aid funds for the Afghan government that were parked abroad, such as in the United States and Europe, were frozen.
The freeze was made because foreign governments did not want to fund the Taliban-led government directly. Global financial institutions have also stopped funding.
Earlier on Thursday, Taliban officials held a meeting with German and Dutch special envoys. The Taliban government envoy later said the two countries were willing to explore the payment of health and education workers directly through international organizations.
It was not clear whether the Taliban’s announcement on Saturday had anything to do with this.
Meanwhile another Taliban spokesman, Inamullah Samangani said on Twitter on Saturday (20/11), that the daily revenue collection from the Taliban government has been increasing every day.
“The finance ministry said that in the last 78 working days in the past three months, we have generated revenues of about 26.915 billion Afghan dollars ($288 million),” he said.
“We collected 557 million Afgani’s earnings (US$5.9 million) on Wednesday alone,” Samangani said, citing the finance ministry, adding that pension payments for retired workers would also be released soon.
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