The Guardian Council approved the resolution "Prohibition on the Employment of Retirees"
Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, spokesman for the Guardian Council, announced on Thursday, September 12, that the council had approved a plan to amend the law banning the employment of retirees.
This plan was approved by the Islamic Consultative Assembly in early August of this year with the aim of limiting the employment of retirees in the country's executive agencies. However, the Guardian Council stated that some of its provisions conflicted with the authority of the Leader of the Islamic Republic, especially in the field of the armed forces, and referred the plan back to the Assembly, which was ultimately amended in the Assembly on September 26.
In his remarks on Thursday, Mr. Kadkhodaei explained part of the text of this resolution, according to which the heads of the three branches of government, the First Vice President, the Deputy Speakers of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, members of the Guardian Council, ministers, and vice presidents are exempt from this plan.
This plan, however, prevents retirees from being appointed as governors, ambassadors, and deputy ministers. As it was previously announced, with its implementation, "1,700 government managers" would have to resign from their positions.
There have also been conflicting opinions about the removal of mayors. Tayyebeh Siavashi, a representative from Tehran in the parliament, said that the plan would also include mayors, in which case Tehran Mayor Mohammad Ali Afshani would have to resign from his position, but Hassan Rasouli, a member of the Tehran City Council, expressed a different opinion and said that the head of the president's office, the secretary of the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and the mayor of Tehran would be defined on a par with ministers.
The Guardian Council spokesman, however, did not mention this in his explanation, only saying that the ban on employing retirees would not include veterans over 50 percent, freedmen over three years, and children of martyrs.
He added: "In some clauses, exceptions are made for some agencies or the armed forces, which are subject to their own laws."
Mr. Kadkhodaei also told Iranian state television that "the procedure for implementing this resolution is subject to a two-month period, and organizations and bodies to which this law applies must take action within two months regarding its implementation, and the guarantee for implementing this law, like other laws, will be criminalization or dismissal from service."
Iranian parliamentarians hope that the implementation of this law will reduce the number of unemployed people in the country, but it is not yet clear how many retirees will be covered by this law, and how their replacements will be selected.
The head of the Iranian Statistical Center announced late last year that the number of "absolutely unemployed" people in Iran was 3 million 226 thousand. The Iranian Statistical Center also estimated the unemployment rate in this spring at 12.1 percent, saying that this index had decreased by half a percent compared to the spring of last year.
According to this statistic, the country's unemployed population decreased by 44,958 people this spring, reaching 3,322,000. However, a recent report by the Iranian Parliament Research Center called the unemployment statistics in the country "worrying and crisis-causing."
The report says that the unemployment rate for youth, women, and educated people is "a warning that highlights the need to change the course of Iran's economy more than ever before."
Source: Radio Farda
