Iran workers stage demo outside Ahmadinejad’s office

Iran Focus: a pro-MEK website

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”. READ MORE

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”.