Iran: Teachers To Remain Under the Poverty Line, Regardless of Whether Regime Parliament Adopts Ranking Bill
Iran: Nationwide Teachers’ Protests in 66 cities
Written by
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
NCRI logo• Raise in salaries of one million teachers on paper equals 20% of the IRGC budget increase
• Even if a parliamentary resolution is adopted and 10 or 20 million rials is added to teachers’ salaries, their living conditions will worsen due to astronomical inflation. Meanwhile, the country’s wealth is wasted on nuclear and missile projects and spent on warmongering activities or plundered by the ruling mullahs. $1 trillion is taken from the nation’s wealth by the Khamenei-controlled foundations.
Terrified of the surge in strikes and the uprising by teachers and educators, on December 15, 2021, after a 13-year delay, the clerical regime’s parliament approved the teachers’ ranking bill in six articles. According to the third memorandum of this bill, “the maximum increase in payments resulting from the implementation of this law will be at the threshold of 125,000 billion rials and will cover the period starting September 21, 2021, until the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2022). And from March 21, 2022, its implementation will be subject to the financial burden on the annual budget laws.”
This bill, if adopted, will add between 10 to 25 million rials to the teachers’ salaries by March 20, 2021, after which it will be conditional on next year’s budget. Moreover, Hossein Arab Asadi, deputy head of the Employment Affairs Organization (Raisi’s representative in the regime’s parliament), questioned the regime’s ability to pay the salary increase for this year, saying: “The government does not have the credit to implement this bill this year.”
The raise in the salaries of one million teachers, even if paid, is about one-fifth of 550,000 billion rials increase in the IRGC’s budget for the next Iranian calendar year starting March 21, 2022. The amount allocated to the presidential offices is three times this year’s. The amount allocated to increase teachers’ salaries in the clerical regime parliament’s bill is equal to $450 million, while more than $1 trillion from the plundered wealth of the Iranian people is in Khamenei-controlled institutions. Tens of billions of dollars of the nation’s wealth are wasted on nuclear, ballistic missiles projects, or in warmongering activities each year, or are plundered by various factions of the ruling mullahs.
Iranian Teachers Hold Three-day Strikes in Protest to Government Policies
Following the approval of this bill in the clerical regime’s parliament, the teachers’ organizations described it as a coup de grace to the ranking bill, emphasizing that if this bill is implemented, teachers’ salaries will remain under the poverty line even due to rampant inflation. They stressed that they will continue their protests.
The Education Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) hailed the protesting teachers, stressing that the health, well-being, and lives of Iranians are of no value to the inhuman clerical regime. The criminal, plundering mullahs ruling the country are only concerned with maintaining their grip on power. Poverty, inflation, and unemployment can only end with the overthrow of the religious fascism that rules Iran and the establishment of freedom and democracy.
National Council of Resistance of Iran
Education Committee
December 17, 2021