Al Mukalla: Yemeni president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi has vowed to address acute shortages of cash and pay government salaries as his forces push to kick rebel forces from the city of Taiz and other locations.

A day after landing in the port city of Aden, the government’s temporary base, Hadi told a gathering of financial officials that his government would work on injecting cash into state-run financial institutes in order to be able to pay public servants.

Thousands of government employees from across Yemen have complained that they have not received their salaries since September when Hadi ordered relocating the central bank headquarters to Aden.

On Sunday, Hadi said that the relocation was “necessary” to put an end to Al Houthis’ plundering of the state money.

Saba, the state news agency did not elaborate on what financial “measures” Hadi would implement in order to address the cash shortage.

In September, Hadi pledged to pay government employees who were added to the payroll before the Al Houthi coup in 2014. Meanwhile on the ground, Yemeni army commanders in the city of Taiz said yesterday that Al Houthis launched consecutive assaults on their positions in a bid to recapture strategic locations they lost in previous battles.

Colonel Mansour Al Hassani, a spokesperson for the Supreme Military Council, told Gulf News that his forces have gone on the defensive in the last several days after taking control of many key sites on the eastern and western sides of the city.

“They have mounted several attacks on our forces after mobilising tribesmen and Republic Guard soldiers from other provinces,” Al Hassani said.

Fighting flared in Yemen’s third largest city last week amid a government push to eject Al Houthi militants from eastern suburbs.

Since last year, the Iran-backed rebels have besieged Taiz and fired mortars into the city centre killing hundreds of residents supportive of Hadi’s government.

“We are optimistic about the arrival of president Hadi to Aden. We have information that they [Hadi and the Saudi Arabia-led coalition] are preparing for a massive operation to liberate Taiz,” Al Hassani said.

In the southern province of Abyan, a senior pro-government resistance figure was killed on yesterday by a roadside bomb in the town of Al Ain.

Aden Al Ghad reported that Al Khader Al Moulem, an Islamist Salafi fighter, was on his way to a local mosque when the bomb planted by unknown men detonated.

On Sunday, Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad, the UN envoy for Yemen announced a new bid for peace talks between the government and rebels, after the latest ceasefire failed to bring an end the 20-month conflict.

He was to head to Riyadh and Kuwait “to prepare for a new round” of talks after leaving Muscat late Saturday where he met with representative of Yemen’s Al Houthi rebels and their allies.