The livelihood conditions of millions of Iran’s workers has taken a downward turn during the coronavirus epidemic making conditions even worse than before.
According to a report released today by the regime’s Parliament, 2 to 6 million Iranians, many of them workers, will become unemployed due to coronavirus conditions.
Reports indicate that unemployed workers in a factory in southwestern Iran have now resorted to picking waste to make ends meet during the coronavirus crisis that has killed at least 36,600 people.
A member of the Fasa Sugar Cube Factory Labor Council in Fars province said these workers were only living on their subsidies.
Hadi Mahmoud told the state-run ILNA News Agency today that at least 140 workers in the factory had months of unpaid wages.
According to recent figures announced by the regime, at least 100,000 of Iran’s workers have lost their jobs in the northern provinces of Mazandaran and Golestan and the western province of Lorestan in the last 10 days.
These figures must be taken with a grain of salt as the regime usually covers up its crises by giving out “engineered” figures.
Another official report said that close to 65,000 people in Mazandaran, Qom, the western province of Kermanshah, the southwestern province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Mahabad in northwestern Iran and Sabzevar in the northeast have registered to receive unemployment insurance.
With the inactivity of the construction industry, at least 80,000 construction workers have lost their jobs in Mazandaran alone.
Iran’s workers are barely able to make ends meet including paying for rent and their daily needs.
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According to a labor activist in Mazandaran, construction workers in the northern province are living in the “worst of conditions and do not have money for bread”.
Bread is considered the most basic food in Iran and usually stands for food in general.
Hadi Sadati, who is the head of the Mazandaran Construction Workers Union told the state-run ILNA News Agency yesterday that construction workers have been unemployed for two months and are living “in appalling poverty”.
According to the former Minister of Roads and Urban Development, the money that the government has promised as aid to businesses, “does not agree with the depth of the disaster”.
Abbas Akhondi said that thousands of small to medium workshops and businesses would be forced to shut down adding that they would not be able to get back on their feet for some time.
The state-run Arman daily wrote yesterday that Iranians had depleted their savings and were now forced to sell their belongings.
“Many people who are seen in the jewelry shops these days are not buyers, but sellers of gold,” the daily wrote.
Along with the widespread unemployment of workers and their appalling livelihood conditions, the health of workers is also being neglected in Iran’s factories.
“Another issue that has raised concerns these days is the health of workers in the workshops and factories that have started operating. Just a few days ago, it was reported that 37 workers at the Urmia Petrochemical Plant (NW Iran) had tested positive for coronavirus,” the Shargh state-run daily wrote yesterday.
The daily said that 82 tests were carried out in the factory which meant that 45% of those who tested were positive for the virus.
“It would seem that on the verge of May Day, the situation of Iranian workers is worse than ever,” the daily wrote.
Iran’s Ministry of Health said today that 5,877 Iranians had died from the virus since the start of the epidemic.
But an opposition group that announces daily coronavirus fatalities said the regime was covering up the real numbers. The National Council of Resistance of Iran said that 36,600 people had died from the virus in 301 cities across the country.
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