NCRI – According to reports received from Iran, thousands of retirees from Iran’s steel industry staged a protest in front of the regime’s parliament in Tehran on Sunday, April 17.
On Sunday around 5000 retired workers of Iran’s Steel Industry and their families gathered in front of the parliament to protest a delay in payment of their pensions and other insurance problems. Many of them had gone to Tehran from Isfahan, central Iran.
The protesters carried placards with their demands.
Their pensions for the month of March have not yet been paid. According to the protesters, in the past five years they have been deprived of some dividends such as those they ought to have received for hard labor and having children and a spouse.
According to reports from Tehran, the Iranian regime dispatched hundreds of repressive forces from its special units and plainclothes agents to the place of the protest. The regime’s forces controlled the streets nearby, including where Shafa Yahyaian Hospital is located, and prevented people and vehicles from stopping in nearby streets.
In a separate development, retired Iranian educators called for a protest on Monday, April 18, in front of the regime’s parliament.
In their statement the educators wrote: With every passing day, economic problems accumulate and the gap between social classes deepens. Regretfully, the educator’s society and in particular the retirees have suffered the most here and despite receiving praises in the media, this stratum of the society has not received any dividends and benefits.
“With the assumption of power by the government of hope and wisdom [Hassan Rouhani’s government] not only has there been no improvement in the condition of retired people, but discrimination inside the organization has been added to the problems,” the statement added.
The state-run Javan newspaper acknowledged on April 14 that the pensions of the retirees have been usurped from them. Quoting one of the retirees it wrote that one month of his pension is lost through multiple delays. This retiree said: “At the beginning our pensions were deposited at the beginning of the month much like everyone else. It was around a year or a year and a half ago that our wages were delayed for up to 16 months.”
Javan wrote: “The delay in depositing retirees’ pensions and employees’ wages is a new scenario that initiated one or two years ago and this puts pressure on the retirees.”