The hard livelihoods of workers and social security retirees is an issue that Iran’s officials are ignoring easily, while these people have and are working in difficult conditions in the hope of one day having the chance of a short vacation, without any problems and being unconcerned about their living expenses.
Working for more than 20-30 years in the factories, hospitals, roads, or elsewhere, they are forced to take aid from others and beg the government for a little support while feeling being exploited by them.
Their salaries do not equal the back-breaking costs. For example, in the Mazandaran province, a family of four must have a wage of 10 million Tomans in a month to be able to have a dignified life. The average income of a retired worker is about 4.5 million Tomans.
How should the workers and the retirees fill the 10 million livelihood basket, selling cigarettes on the streets, car washing, being a guard at the park entrances, and other false jobs? This is the question that many of them are putting on the desk of the government’s officials.
Worse still is that many of them are forced to take debts which they are not able to pay back even over their entire lives.
The purchasing power of the workers and retirees has been greatly lowered, and the result of these conditions is the recession of the economy and the markets. The workers do not have the power to buy the goods which they have produced.
That’s not all; even their children are jobless, and this is adding to their concerns, while many of the country’s youths are struggling with addiction and other social harms. In such a situation who is a worker even able to think about the country’s progress and flourishing production?
The head of the country’s Planning and Budget Organization has promised that the wages will be increased by 10 to 30 percent which in this situation will be not any help to the workers and retirees.
Many of the workers and retirees are asking the regime’s officials if they were able to live with 4.5-5 million Tomans. While most of them have wages more than 30 million Tomans.
The government is not even implementing the Free Treatment Act which is one of the Constitutional paragraphs since the revolution in 1979 but was never executed and the workers and retirees are forced to pay the high costs from their own pockets.
The country’s social security organization said the reason that it is not able to cover the workers’ and retirees’ treatment is because of a lack of resources while the government owes them 400 trillion Tomans. This is something that is facing trouble since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.
In its October 19 issue, the state-run newspaper Hamdeli wrote: “The economic situation in the country, three months after the inception of Ebrahim Raisi’s government, has not only not changed compared to the previous government, but in some cases, the situation seems more dangerous and the occurrence of devastating inflationary floods is likely in the second half of the year.”
This newspaper added: “The conditions in which we are in, are very difficult and complicated. Currently, the country’s economy is severely inflamed by inflation (the system) in the short term is in danger, instead of saying which direction the country’s economy is heading in the next few years, we should consider what situation we might be caught in, in the months ahead and less than a year.”
Meanwhile, the state-run website Bahar about the people’s food security wrote: “The trend of weakening people’s livelihoods has continued to the point that with the new wave of food price crises it has dismantled the tables of many households and they are deprived of the most basic foods.” (Bahar, October 19, 2021)
With this situation expressed by the state media, it is easily predictable that the situation of the workers and retirees will become worse.
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