By Shahriar Kia
While Iran’s economic situation continues to deteriorate, the regime is doing nothing to help protect the people’s livelihoods against rising prices and declining purchase power.
Ahmad Tavakoli, a member of the Iranian regime’s Expediency Council and former member of the Majlis (parliament), acknowledged in an interview with the state-run Icana News Agency on June 15, 2019 that the people are losing their capability of purchasing their most basic needs.
Tavakoli also said that that the rate of inflation in Iran between March 2018 and March 2019 stood at 47.5 percent. As such, he pointed out, a worker whose wage was 13.5 million ($100) per month last year would only have a purchasing power of 6.5 million rials by March 2019. ($1 US = 135,000 rials at the current unofficial exchange rate)
According to separate figures published on June 16, 2019 by the regime’s semi-official ILNA news agency, an average Iranian family’s ‘living basket’ currently costs 64 million rials per month for procuring basic needs. This is based on figures from the Statistical Centre of Iran. In the past months the costs of living have increased by more than 70 percent, the report said.
Under the current conditions, Iranian workers need at least an extra 22 million rials per month to respond to their most basic needs, the report said.
What makes the situation worse is that in many regions of the country, workers do not even receive their meager salaries for months.
The regime’s inefficiency and lack of response to the most basic needs of the people continues to spark anger and protests across the country. The past months have seen numerous demonstrations and strikes by different labor communities in protest to rising prices, unpaid wages and deteriorating work conditions.
While ordinary Iranians are struggling to make ends meet, the regime wastes the nation’s resources on sponsoring terror in the region, fuelling the war in Syria, producing weapons of mass destruction and enriching the Revolutionary Guards and the ruling mullahs.
For as long as the mullahs are in power, Iranians will never be able to benefit from the wealth of their natural resources and prosper as a free people.
Regional peace and prosperity for the Iranian people can only come about once Iranians and their organized Resistance, led by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) bring about regime change in Iran.
