New Troubles for BRT Night Sleepers; “You Must Get Off at 4 AM”
Three weeks after the practice of citizens unable to afford housing rent sleeping on buses in Tehran became public knowledge, reports indicate that based on a new decision, people who spend nights on “sleeper buses” are forcibly removed at “four in the morning”.
Ahmad Ahmadi Sadr, CEO of Tehran Municipality’s Welfare Organization, had recently announced the deployment of 20 buses across Tehran for sleeper buses, but the news website “Tejarat News” wrote on Tuesday, December 28, that “they say they are forced to get off these buses at four in the morning. Then they are forced to buy tickets again and seek refuge in the vehicles of the Vahed Company to get through the severe cold”.
Members of Tehran City Council had previously criticized why these people “don’t go to shelters,” but Tejarat News in its field report writes that sleeper bus users are people “with clean clothes who cannot afford to rent a house” and told the outlet’s reporter that “the shelter is not sanitary. It has a dirty environment. We’ve tried going to the shelter several times to sleep but couldn’t stay there because it’s so filthy”.
Bus drivers also told Tejarat News that “the shelter environment is not good for people who are not addicted and have proper appearance”.
Nevertheless, following the publication of news about sleeping on buses, Mehdi Chamran, chairman of Tehran City Council, on the fourth of Dey reduced this issue to the condition of addicts and shelters, saying “some addicts are not in a condition to go to shelters”.
He and other officials also severely criticized the coverage of the sleeper bus story by Persian-language media outlets outside the country.
While according to an announcement by Iran’s Central Bank, rents in Tehran and its suburbs have increased by more than 50 percent, field reports from the capital indicate that some people sleep on express bus line vehicles at night due to inability to pay housing rent.
According to reports, the cost of spending one night on express line buses (BRT) in Tehran is 12 to 25 thousand tomans. This amount costs a sleeper bus user approximately 360 to 750 thousand tomans per month.
Source: Radio Farda
