Unemployment tops 45 per cent in some of Iran’s provinces

The Iranian regime’s former representative at the International Labour Organisation has criticised the unemployment figures announced by the Ahmadinejad government. Abbas Vatanpoor said to the Mehr news agency: “With a preliminary calculation it is possible to know that the current unemployment rate is 22 per cent. At present unemployment is not only not 11.9 or 13.8 [per cent], but in some provinces it is above 45 per cent.”

A few days earlier Dariush Ghanbari, a reformist MP said: “Unfortunately these days we are witnessing many anomalies including the increase in suicides, and in Ilam there have been 11 suicides, because of unemployment and this is in a situation that we have a religious and legal responsibility to find a solution to this issue.” Ilam is a predominantly Kurdish city in western Iran.

The regime’s leaders not only deny that there has been a rise in unemployment but Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, the Labour and Social Affairs Minister, recently said: “By creating a million and two hundred thousand jobs in a year, the unemployment rate of 12.5 in 1387 [2008-09] was reduced to 11.3 percent in the autumn of 1388  [2009-10].”

Yet the drop in economic growth makes it certain that the government’s statistics are totally false. Abbas Vatanpoor exposed some of the ways the regime fiddles figures: “Right now by counting as employed soldiers, house wives and students and also people who work an hour or two in a week, are part of the ambiguities of unemployment and the real employment situation in the country.”

Recently the MPs of the regime’s Islamic Consultative Assembly (majles) summoned the Economy Minister, as well as the Industry and Mines Minister, to explain why unemployment has gone up.

The Iranian regime has, throughout its existence, systematically falsified economic and social data to present itself in a better light. To this effect these figures are normally either halved or doubled, depending on the statistic concerned.

Iranian Workers’ Solidarity Network
31 May 2010