Iranian Lawmaker Warns Of Impending Medicine Shortage
An Iranian lawmaker has warned about an impending medicine crisis following an inadequate budget allocation.
An Iranian lawmaker has warned about an impending medicine crisis following an inadequate budget allocation.
Homayoun Sameyah, a member of the Parliament's Health Commission, announced that the budget needed to procure medicine and medical equipment is 150 thousand billion tomans (nearly 3 billion USD), but the fund allocated by the government is less than half this figure.
“Our prediction is that in the coming months, the issue of medicine and medical equipment shortage will worsen,” he said on Monday.
Despite the warnings, Minister of Health Bahram Einollahi is underplaying the crisis, claiming that “most medicines are available, and there will be no problem regarding the supply of pharmaceuticals this year.”
Medicine shortages in more economically deprived areas of the country have already reached crisis point with medical staff at hospitals in the southeastern city of Zahedan citing shortages of IV fluid, insulin, and inhaler sprays.
In the last Iranian year, ending March 20, the medicine crisis intensified as people witnessed multifold increase in prices. The government scrapped an import subsidy for food and medications last year.
Although the national currency bounced back in the past month it is still down 50 percent compared to six months ago. The country imported around 100 million euros of medicines a month from Europe alone in 2022 and also large quantities from China and India.
In an audio file sent to Iran International and verified by our contacts, a man recounts the ordeal of contract workers in the companies active in oil, gas and petrochemical industries.
The worker especially talked about the case of himself and his colleagues working under contract by the Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Corporation, aka Persian Gulf Holding, where a $170-million embezzlement case at one of its subsidiaries put the company on spotlight last winter.
Persian Gulf Holding is a large Iranian quasi-governmental company that claims to be an independent entity but practically it is a large part of the government-controlled energy industry with 15 subsidiaries. Regime insider Abdolali Ali-Asgari – a former head of the country’s state broadcaster is the current CEO of the company.
Describing their situation as “stuck in hidden slavery,” the worker says the problems stem from the special status of a few well-connected senior managers and systematic corruption in the energy industry.
“Iran’s oil industry mafia takes advantage of the workers, especially project and contract workers, and forces them to work in terrible conditions," he said.
With double-digit unemployment and ever-falling currency, workers have little choice to find other employment paying them more than the minimum wage of $120 a month.
Workers' lives are not important for managers; wages are meager and are paid with delays; there are no weekend breaks; the managers are selected from those with links to senior officials and do not do anything but sit in their ivory towers with their laptops; and when workers go on strike to demand changes, the security forces threaten the them and their families to break their strikes. These are just some of the gravamina of the worker in his audio file.
He went on to say that several workers have died in the past few months due to non-compliance of companies with safety issues, but the authorities do not let such incidents to be reflected in mainstream media.
The worker claimed that the firms which employ them sign contracts with the government in euros and dollars but pay workers in rials and often two or three months late.
One of the main reasons that the information about the plight of oil industry workers does not make news is that their workplaces are usually located in remote areas with poor connectivity to big cities, making them vulnerable to pressure by their employers.
In an interview with Iran International on Sunday, journalist Reza Hajihosseini described the situation of these workers as a case of “dehumanization,” noting that the way the employers treat the workers reminds us of a leaked video showing how jailors treated prisoners in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Javad Abbasi Tavallali, a journalist with firsthand experience about the working conditions in Asaluyeh -- a city in Bushehr province and home to the majority of the country’s energy plants and refineries – told Iran International that almost all these government contractors, such as Petro Sina Arya, PetroPars, and Petro Paydar Iranian, are affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.
“These companies make the best use of a lack of media coverage about their actions and a lack of workers unions,” he said, adding that “the exploitation and the disasters that are taking place in Asaluyeh are known to the government thanks to regular reports by Khatam-al Anbiya Construction Headquarters – the engineering wing of the IRGC – for decades.”
The worker's statement comes on the backdrop of a renewed round of strikes by Iranian factory workers, including workers in the country's oil industry.
Since Saturday, workers of more than 30 oil, gas, steel and petrochemical companies in Asaluyeh and Kangan in Bushehr province, Dehloran in Ilam province, Gachsaran in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, and many more started another round of strike demanding wage increases in the face of more than 50 percent annual inflation.
Gen. Mohammad-Reza Naghdi, speaking Sunday to Fars news agency controlled by the IRGC, made the anti-Semitic remark amid a torrent of daily attacks by Islamic Republic officials against Israel.
The renewed rhetoric began just a few weeks after Iran concluded an agreement with Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations and according to Israeli officials, instigated attacks by Palestinians in early April.
Naghdi, who is a deputy to IRGC's chief commander, went on to say that while Satan guides the Zionists, Iran’s regime “is led by saints” and its mission is to inspire light in the hearts of men. “Some have been awakened” and even voluntarily provide top-secret information to the Islamic Republic.
“Sometimes they are shocked how the Iranians found a particular secret,” he said. “They search and search again for a spy and cannot find one, unbeknownst to them that many of their personnel are cooperating out of conviction.”
Naghdi, like many other IRGC officers, is adept at propaganda, having been raised in a religious milieu where fantastic stories are told and told again to build faith in the Shiite ideology. However, faced with multiple crises regime officials seem to have resorted more intensely to twisting reality to justify their policies or deflect criticism.
Recently, a leaked audio recording showed how an intelligence official used bizarre and conspiratorial statements in a speech to try to explain away multiple problems the regime faces.
In fact, since July 2020, evidence has piled up that Israel has deeply penetrated Iran’s security barriers and has succeeded in major sabotage operations against nuclear and military targets. The regime in Tehran and particularly the IRGC have lost face after telling the people for four decades that they are very strong in security and military spheres.
Their myth shattered, their failures in the economic sphere now loom even larger. The economy is in tatters and tens of millions of Iranians have sunk into poverty. Last year, the regime faced the most intense protests in its four-decade history, and large-scale unrest can resume at any moment.
Naghdi claimed that last year 10,000 attacks took place against Israel, taking credit for standing behind what the regime calls “the resistance front.”
“This is the revenge of the Islamic Revolution; the destruction of the Zionist regime,” he said.
Naghdi also echoed statements by other senior officials in the past few days that Israel’s power of deterrence has been broken and not only it is unable to intimidate Iran, but also it can no longer deter the Hezbollah and Palestinian militants.
He also claimed that the Islamic Republic has almost driven out the United States from the region, highlighting the US defeat in Afghanistan and the hasty withdrawal.
“They escaped from Afghanistan and most of them also escaped from Iraq and the rest will also leave. They have been defeated, and this trend will continue,” Naghdi claimed. He also mocked the US and Britain for not being able to do anything when their servicemen were detained by the Revolutionary Guard, in 2016 and 2007 respectively.
Claiming that people throughout the world follow the ideology of Iran’s regime, Naghdi asked, “In which era in history we, or any other country, had such an influence? I have estimated that daily 100,000 experts wake up, go to work, get paid in different countries just to overthrow the Islamic Republic regime…”
