Since mid-2019 and especially since spring 2020, along with the increase in housing prices and building materials, Iran is witnessing an increase in the cost of construction so that under the influence of this situation, the construction industry has been seen a huge recession and in recent months it is making many people hopeless to having a roof over their heads.
The new government has promised to build one million housing each year which has been criticized by many officials as a hollow promise due to the country’s bad economic situation.
But one news that has shocked many people about the housing situation is the government’s negotiations which the Chinese use of the country’s constructing industry.
Something that even many of the regime’s officials are complaining about it. In an interview Eghbal Shakeri, a member of the parliament’s Civil Commission said:
“In a recent meeting with the commission members, the Minister of Roads and Urban Development announced this issue and did not provide details about it, but it is not exclusive to Chinese companies, and companies with the technology of other countries can participate in the construction of Iranian housing under the condition of technology transfer. Shakeri stressed: ‘Technology transfer is the main condition for agreeing to the presence of foreigners in Iran’s construction.’”
Amazingly, on the question of why the government is not using Iranian constructions firms and engineers with the help of the world updated technologies Iraj Rahbar the Vice President of The Association of Mass Builders of Tehran Province answered:
“Unfortunately, the Minister of Roads and Urban Development does not have enough information about domestic facilities and capabilities in the construction industry.”
The question is, why then has the regime put someone at the helm of such an industry when he is not informed about the country’s construction capabilities?
The painful part is that now according to the expressions of some of the country’s experts, Iran has more than 500 thousand engineers, while many of them are unemployed and the government is insisting to use foreign engineers in different parts of the country’s industry which is raising the skepticism about corruption.
The damage is in projects like the Tehran-North Freeway project the regime used Chinese companies, and now after 20 years this project is being left unfinished and these companies have left the country.
Other effects which are hurting the country’s economy is that technologies for this field have been imported from aboard while the country owns the same power, and this is causing an increase in unemployment and many of the producers of these technologies in the field of the urban construction are forced to export their production to other countries like Iraq having no costumer inside the country.
Another sad thing is while training engineers are putting a huge amount of expenses on any country, Iran has one of the highest numbers of brain drain.
This situation raises doubts more than ever about president Ebrahim Raisi’s decision to construct one million housing units in one year.
