In its latest move against low-income segments of society, the Iranian regime has suspended food voucher benefits for a large number of citizens and, through text messages, has instructed them to visit government service offices to prove they are in Iran; otherwise, they will be classified as overseas residents and will no longer be eligible for the vouchers.
Many citizens have gone to these government service offices after receiving the messages, creating crowded lines of people trying to prove that they live in Iran. Even more striking is that they must also pay a fee to prove their presence.
The government’s move has sparked widespread reactions, with many social media users pointing out that even if the goal were to cut food vouchers for people living abroad, there are much simpler ways to verify residency—unless the real objective is to generate revenue from citizens while creating yet another burden for them.
The monthly food voucher allocation is 10 million rials (about $5.3) per person. The benefit is provided in non-cash form and is designated for purchasing essential goods.
A citizen who had visited a government service office in Tehran to verify residency wrote on X that amid the crowd of people trying to prove they were in Iran, a child wearing torn sandals caught their attention. The child had come with his father to prove they were not living abroad. According to the account, when the father learned he had to pay 1.4 million rials (about 14% of the voucher’s value) to register the residency verification, he said he could not afford the fee, took his child’s hand, and left the office.
The regime is generating revenue from the fees it charges people to prove their residency while also likely hoping that some citizens will abandon the process of reclaiming their food vouchers and ultimately be removed from the list of beneficiaries.
In a statement, the Ministry of Welfare said that if the head of a household is not present in the country or their residency in Iran cannot be verified, the entire household will lose eligibility for food vouchers and subsidies. However, if another household member is abroad, only that individual will be removed from the list of recipients.
According to the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, people who received the text message have until September 21 to visit government service offices in person. Otherwise, their food vouchers will be completely canceled. The issue, however, is that the government stopped paying these benefits in August and has made restoring them conditional on verifying residency in Iran.
The state-run news website Entekhab, in a report titled “Is Residency Verification an Excuse to Generate Revenue from the Poor?”, wrote: “A citizen who needs food vouchers to cover essential living expenses first loses this support and then must visit multiple offices and pay fees to have it restored.”
The Iranian regime has no objective other than reducing its own costs and reaching into people’s pockets; otherwise, verifying whether individuals are in Iran could easily be done through the recorded data on citizens’ entry to and exit from the country’s borders.
The state-run Entekhab website also asked whether the real purpose of this process is truly “identity verification” or creating a new source of revenue by cutting food vouchers and forcing citizens to visit service offices.
The consequences of cutting citizens’ food vouchers become even clearer when considering that the government has also classified many people who travel to neighboring countries—including Armenia, Turkey, and Iraq—for work and livelihood as “overseas residents” and has cut their benefits.
A video showing crowds outside a government service office in the border town of Maku illustrates the situation. Residents say that because of economic conditions in border regions, they travel to Turkey several times a month for work and to earn a living, but their permanent residence remains in Iran. Nevertheless, their frequent cross-border travel has caused government systems to classify them as “overseas residents.”
Some low-income people are forced to sell their food vouchers for small amounts of money to cover medical expenses.
The problems surrounding the food voucher program are not limited to benefits being cut under the label of “living abroad.” Field reports published in recent weeks show that many stores have stopped accepting vouchers because of government delays in reimbursing them.
Some retailers also told the state-run ISNA news agency that they purchased goods with their own capital and provided them to consumers, while the voucher amount was deducted from households’ accounts, yet the stores still have not been reimbursed. This is despite the program’s guidelines stating that settlements should take no more than 72 hours.
