In Baluchistan Province 70% of People Live in Poverty

RoozOnline

While the gap between the rich and poor among Iranians is growing by the day a Majlis representative yesterday presented deplorable statistics about living conditions in the deprived province of Sistan and Baluchistan revealing that over 70% of the people in the region live under the poverty line and that at least half the children there are deprived of their right to schooling.

This situation was revealed by Hamid-Reza Peshang, the representative of Sistan and Baluchistan province in parliamentary during a pre-session speech who further said, “From a development perspective, our province ranked 31st among the country’s provinces in the decades of 1986, 1996 and 2006. From a political and economic perspective the province ranks among the 12 least developed regions. The census of 2006 and 2011 also shows a wide gap between our province and Tehran. The 2011 census also indicated that tour province suffers from a very high rate of unemployment. 51% of the residents of the province live in the countryside while the contribution of the province to the national GDP is less than 1%. Two thirds of the population of the province are deprived of potable water. Only 50% of students remain in school and between 150,000 and 200,000 students drop out. The average distance between a village and a school is 30 kilometers and a third of the classes are held below acceptable standards.”

He continued, “Mr. President, 70% of the people of this province live below the poverty line.”

50% Unemployment

Last week, Hossein-Ali Shahriari, the representative of the city of Zahedan from the province of Sistan and Baluchistan in the Majlis announced that unemployment in the province stands at 50%. “The government may define unemployment in different ways and it may categorize someone who works just one hour during a week to be employed. But this definition must be corrected because today over 50% of the educated young people of the province of Sistan are unemployed. Unemployment brings despair and in some cases suicides have been reported. The government needs to openly talk with people and present its issues. When they say that some hundreds of job opportunities have been created around the country, this is absolutely not true because there are a number of educated unemployed individuals in every family in the province of Sistan.”

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Last month Iran’s ILNA state-run labor news agency revealed that a fifth of children under the age of five in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan suffered from malnutrition. It wrote, “Sistan and Baluchistan is among the widest and yet poorest provinces in the country whose population today suffers from a critical malnutrition problem. Other experts have also warned that children under the age of five in the province suffer from serious and widespread malnutrition pointing out that a fifth of these children are shorter and underweight.”

A local weekly in the province has also written about a 10-year drop in life-expectancy in the province. “In late 2014 the World Health Organization reported that among 222 countries, life expectancy was 73.5 years, ranking the country 106th. According to officials from Iran’s ministry of health, Tehran and Gilan provinces hold the highest life expectancy in the country while the province of Sistan and Baluchistan occupy the lowest position. The difference in life expectancy between the highest and lowest (i.e., Sistan and Baluchistan) is 10 years.”