Reporting by PMOI/MEK
March 9, 2021—On Sunday, Iranian farmers in Hashtbandi, Hormozgan province, went on strike in protest to the low purchase prices of onions. One of the farmers said, “As you can see, the farmers of Hashtbandi have gone on strike due to the low purchase price of onions, which has driven us into bankruptcy. No one supports farmers. The prices of fertilizer and pesticide and everything else has skyrocketed, but farming produce is being purchased from farmers at the same price, which has driven the lives of farmers into misery.”
Strikes by farmers in Hormozgan
On Monday, the workers of Mahshahr’s petrochemical factory held a rally in front of the city governor’s office protesting the delay in paying their wages. The protesters are also concerned about the lack of implementation of labor classification law, which requires employers to adjust the salaries, bonuses, and benefits of workers.
The workers were holding a banner that read: “Listen to the workers demands. We can’t feed our families.”
Protest by workers of Mahshahr Petrochemical Factory
On the same day, railway workers in Nourabad, Arak, held a rally in protest to not receiving their salaries. The workers went on strike and stopped working.
In Tehran, customers of the car manufacturer Azvico gathered in front of the offices of the Industry, Mining, and Trade Ministry. These people are among customers who had collectively pre-purchased 6,000 vehicles from Azvico in 2018, but have not received their purchased cars yet. After two years of delay, Azvico told these customers in 2020 that it will not be producing the cars they had purchased.
State media admits to high prices at the cusp of Persian New Year
As Iran gets ready for the Persian New Year, conditions are getting tougher for the Iranian population. The prices of some food items have increased by 100 percent, state media admits.
In this regard, the state-run Vatan-e Emrooz daily wrote on Monday, “According to the latest figures by the Statistics Center, the point-to-point inflation of food items in February has reached more than 60 percent, which only happened once before after the 1979 revolution. This shows that the people’s living conditions are not in a suitable state.”
Meanwhile, Ebtekar, another state-run newspaper, acknowledged on Monday that living conditions are becoming increasingly harder for the middle and working classes. “In a country like Iran, the livelihoods of large segments of the society are faced with problems, and the middle class is slowly dissipating… The poor conditions of Iranian workers and different segments of the society are the results of not having a vision for fundamental developments and the focus on short-term solutions.”
The Ebtekar article further acknowledges that government policies have had no effect on the lives of workers. “The truth is that there has been no effective action on the part of decision-making institutions and the Majlis [Parliament], with all its talk of facilitating work and investment in production, has only driven investment economic structures toward playing with inflationary waves that have only worsened economic conditions and the lives of the people.”
