September 12-14
City employees in Zabol on the border with Afghanistan staged a demonstration Friday to protest a two-month delay in the payment of their salaries.
It is the norm for private sector firms to make monthly wage payments late by days or even weeks. But one of the benefits of public sector jobs is that the staff is paid on time.
The Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) said that Shahla Rezvani, a spokeswoman for the city of Zabol, walked among the demonstrators and explained that the delay in salaries was due to the freezing of the city’s accounts. News reports did not say why the accounts had been frozen or by whom.
Rezvani said the city was trying to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. But with employees saying they had not been paid for two months, the problem has gone on for some time.
ILNA said the protesters first gathered at the governor’s office, then went to the Justice Department building and finally gathered in front of City Hall, where Rezvani came out to meet them.
Zabol is a city of 130,000 in the far north of Sistan va Baluch-estan province and right on the border with Afghanistan.