Unemployment -- a time bomb in US-occupied Iraq

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 13, 2003

Unemployment -- a time bomb in US-occupied Iraq

An Iraqi civil engineering company received more than 100 applications in response to an advertisement by the company for only one experienced engineer.

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An Iraqi civil engineering company received more than 100 applications in response to an advertisement by the company for only one experienced engineer.

Abu Arshad, the general manager of the company said he was amazed by the huge number of applications he had received, some of them from highly qualified engineers.

In Allawi district, the western part of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, hundreds of people wait by the roadside every morning, even on the Muslim weekend of Friday, seeking a job for one day.

Ghassan Zahid, 30, father of two kids, said he was unfortunate this week because only on two days he found someone to employ him to attend the employer's garden.

These are a few examples of what some experts call Iraq's "new time bomb", namely unemployment.

According to primitive estimates, 60 percent of the working forces of the 25-million Iraqi people are unemployed.

Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Sami Azara al-Majoun, in a statement published Tuesday by the independent daily Azzaman, put the total number of jobless in Iraq at 8.5 million.

Shortly after the collapse of the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on April 9, Iraqi jobless people founded aunion of jobless whose membership has surpassed 150,000 within halfa year.

The union asked the occupation authority and the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council for 100 dollars for each laid-out in compensation, but only 27,000 jobless people got 50,000 dinars (25 dollars) each.

The graveness of the problem further aggravated in May when the US civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer decided to demobilize the 400,000-strong Iraqi army, a governing machine of Saddam.

To buffer the public temper, Baghdad municipal authorities employed 200,000 sweepers to clean streets, squares, parks and gardens.

Omar Mustapha, a middle-aged man who has three children, said he had become a house husband since March when the textile plant he worked for was shut down.

According to unofficial statistics, more than 10,000 plants and workshops are either at standstill or working at 10 percent of their capacity.

Experts estimate that Iraq needs at least 60 billion dollars for reconstruction and reactivating the country's war-devastated economy to create more jobs.

In the Madrid donors' conference last month, a total of 33 billion dollars were raised for rebuilding Iraq, a country which should have been rich for its abundant oil resources.

The high rate of unemployment also triggered a series of social problems, such as the rise of crimes and lawlessness.

The Iraqis aspires for peace and security, but above all they need to earn money to feed their family.

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