1,700 villages in South Khorasan have been depopulated.

According to a news website, water shortages, unemployment, and lack of infrastructure have caused villagers to flee their hometowns. In South Khorasan alone, 1,700 villages have been left uninhabited.

On Saturday, May 20, Mehr News Agency published a report on the migration of villagers to cities in South Khorasan.

This report is consistent with what has been published over the past year about the emptying of villages in a number of Iranian provinces.

Mehr, while pointing out that 1,700 villages in South Khorasan have been depopulated, writes: "Today, there is no water in a large number of villages in Nehbandan County, and people are waiting for mobile water tankers. If today, the border dwellers and nomads of border villages, especially in Nehbandan, shoulder the burden of migration, the government will incur huge costs in the not-too-distant future."

The report continues by referring to the "Nehbandan Development Plan," a plan that was approved during the visit of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Republic, to the city in September 1999, but has not yet been implemented after 21 years.

Alireza Ebadi, Khamenei's representative in South Khorasan, had recently warned, referring to the migration of rural residents to cities, that migration and the burden of cities would create problems for the government.

According to Ebadi, in some villages people do not have drinking water and "with such a situation, there is no hope of staying in the villages."

The most important reasons for the desertification of villages are water shortages, excessive unemployment, backwardness in the health and medical fields, and a lack of structures and means of communication.

Situation in other provinces

According to reports published over the past year about rural migration, the situation in many villages in other provinces is also dire.

In January 2019, the Deputy Minister of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare announced that two thousand of the six thousand villages in Khuzestan had been depopulated.

Ali Shirkani had said that to encourage villagers to stay, suitable jobs should be created and farmers should be covered by social insurance.

Shirkani had stated: "Unfortunately, we have the lowest insurance coverage in the southern provinces of the country, which shows a lack of coordination and coherence between them; we must be forward-looking and teach people to be forward-looking."

In October 2019, the Director General of Rural Affairs and Councils of East Azerbaijan Province stated that 268 of the province's 3,073 villages were uninhabited, and that the main reason for villagers fleeing their hometowns was drought and the lack of suitable job opportunities.

In October 2019, "Nod Ektahani" reported, citing the Ministry of Cooperatives, that 35,000 villages in Iran had been depopulated.

Mohammad Omid, Deputy Minister of Rural Development and Deprived Areas, denied the figure of 35,000 in a telephone interview with the news network, saying: "We have 97,000 settlements in the country, of which 62,000 are inhabited, and the remaining 35,000 settlements are not all villages, but some are gas stations, restaurants, and the like. About a third of this figure, or 12 to 13,000 settlements, are villages that have become uninhabited."

Source: DW