Yemeni prime minister Ahmad Obeid Bin Dhaghar said on Monday that his government, which is temporarily-based in the port city of Aden, sent salaries to all public servants on Monday, across Yemen, including those provinces under the control of Iran-backed Houthis.
“There will no longer be unpaid government employees and the ministry of finance would begin sending salaries to the government institutes [across Yemen] on Monday,” Bin Daghar said on his official Twitter feed this weekend.
Gulf News reported that a cargo plane carrying 200 billion riyals (USD1=310 Riyal] in cash printed in Russia landed in Aden last week.
Yemen has been beset by severe shortage of cash since the government relocated the headquarters of the central bank to Aden in September.
Britain is particularly nervous about developments in Yemen and has secretly deployed its most advanced warship off the coast to guard a crucial shipping lane, according to The Times.
The warship has been sent to protect the Bab al-Mandeb route, as the vast majority of Britain’s oil and gas supplies take this route as their main passage which leads to the Suez Canal.
Any obstacle would mean the electricity could be cut off across Britain, said Peter Roberts, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, who stressed the importance of keeping the strait open.
Britain has abstained from announcing the deployment of Daring off Yemen because of the sensitivity of such a powerful UK warship appearing to be linked to the conflict, stated The Times.
The threat of attacks against vessels using the shipping lane is seen as an expansion of the conflict in Yemen.
