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Iran Focus
 Tehran, Iran, Mar. 13 – Some 150 textile
workers gathered on Monday outside the offices of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to protest
against lay-offs and dismissal of workers in state-owned industries, local
news agencies reported.
The workers complained that after years of labour
in Kermanshah’s “Nasaji Qarb”
textile factory, they had been fired days before the start of the Persian New
Year, the news agency ILNA reported.
“Instead of justice-spreading government”, the workers said, Ahmadinejad’s government should be called the “sacking
government”.
Ahmadinejad had run in the presidential campaign on
a platform of purging corruption, mismanagement, and poverty in society but Iran experts say that workers in Iran have
since become in a greater state of financial flux.
“We now understand what the esteemed government means when it says justice-spreading.
From now on we will call it the ‘sacking government’”, one of the workers
said.
“It is very hard to have to face your wife and child ashamedly on New Year’s
Eve”, another worker said.
“If I wasn’t afraid of God … I would believe my life to be ‘haram’ (unholy)”, one of the protestors who had been
working for the past 25 years said.
One protestor whose wife was ill said, “For eight years we worked and
struggled, but if we had known that it would come to this, we would have gone
to the enemy lines; may be they would have understood more our worth”.
“The closure of any factory means a rise in unemployment, prostitution, and
poverty. Now, what do you think out future holds?”,
another protestor said.
“We haven’t eaten anything”, one worker said. “Most of us have been awake
from last night until now. We
are worried for ourselves and our families”.
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