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Fighting for a job in
Iraq
By David Enders
BAGHDAD
- The new year brings little hope of relief for the
estimated 8.5 million Iraqis who are without jobs.
Though salaries for some civil servants, such as
teachers, have increased greatly under the occupation,
inflation and a slow economic recovery have put
increasing strains on most of the populace.
"In
the past maybe we spent [US[ $400 a month on food, now
we spend $700 or $800 a month," said Baghdad resident
Wissam al-Atrachki, the eldest son in a family of five.
Al-Atrachki is fortunate - he has found a job
with a foreign lawyer who is planning to open a firm in
Baghdad. Others are less lucky.
Hussain Selwan
is living with his family in an abandoned military base
outside al-Dora, a southern suburb of Baghdad. He was
forced out of his home in al-Dora because of rising
rents. Before the invasion he worked as an electrician
in a nearby state factory that has since become a US
base. "Our rent went from 50,000 dinars a year to
300,000 dinars [$30-$120[," he said.
The
Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs estimates that 3
million of those out of work are living below the
poverty line. There are plans to create a six-month
unemployment benefit, but no start date has been set,
said Eman Mustafa, a spokeswoman for the ministry. No
dollar amount has been decided on yet, but Mustafa said
it would be considerably lower than the current per
month for civil servants, about $60.
"It is a
temporary measure, and we think that if it is low it
will encourage people to find work," Mustafa said. The
ministry also plans to open 28 job-placement and
training centers in the next year. A placement center at
the ministry itself was opened last September 16 and has
already received 32,000 resumes. "We've found 1,500 of
those people jobs," Mustafa said. The training will
focus on computer and bilingual education.
"We
will have foreign capitalists coming here who want to
have a well-trained workforce, people who are well
educated," James Otwell, the Coalition Provisional
Authority's (CPA) senior adviser to the ministry, said
in a newsletter published by the ministry.
"Our
job in the labor field is to train those workers to have
those computer skills, to have the ability to work for
those new corporations and link them up, so that they
don't have to go out there and not be able to find
workers"
Foreign investment, which was expected
to be heavy after the invasion, has been slow to
materialize. "Not many companies are entering Iraq -
they're too afraid," said Hussain Kubba, the head of
Kubba Consulting. "Most of the money the Americans spend
is not coming into Iraq. That's good in one way, it
relieves Iraq from further inflationary pressures."
The CPA's own job-creation program, which went
into effect in the autumn and was touted to have created
70,000 jobs, amounted to little more than $2 a day for
cleaning up trash on streets across the country. In some
areas, the budget for the program could not be spent
because people refused to take what they saw as
humiliating work. In others, where demand for positions
was high, political parties made sure their supporters
received the open positions.
"There's no way we
can hire more people to collect rubbish," Kubba said.
"Let's spend some money to refurbish buildings.
Hopefully that will generate some jobs. In the days of
Saddam [Hussein], the Americans would do some bombing
and within an hour Iraqi engineers would decide whether
it could be rebuilt. If it were to be demolished, it was
demolished the next day. If it were to be rebuilt, it
would be done in a fortnight. Now all of the damaged
buildings are left unattended. You see a town that has
been hit by an earthquake."
Kubba said he sees
little hope for anything but marginal improvement until
the problems of electricity shortages and security are
solved. "Before, 17 percent of the workforce existed in
the private sector," Kubba said. "I'd guess the private
sector is operating at about 5-10 percent of its
capacity because of the power shortages. I cannot see
anything working without power."
He was also
careful to qualify reports that played up the salary
boosts civil servants have received. "The increase in
the salary of civil servants was only possible through
the sacking of half a million soldiers," Kubba said.
"Half a million people are now worse off, and there you
have the water tap that keeps the insurgency going. It's
alternative employment. The other problem is that there
is no real government. Fifty percent of the GNP [gross
national product] comes from the government."
Isam al-Khafaj, a former CPA employee who now
heads Iraq Revenue Watch, is skeptical that even once
the government is up and running the problem will be
solved. "The new government is just replicating the old
rentier pattern whereby the state's revenues are
totally detached from everyday life," al-Khafaj said.
"Oil revenues are detached from everyday life, which is
what allowed the state to be a despot before. Jobs were
created without any real revenue and money was just
handed to [Saddam's] cronies, creating a sense among the
people that the state does not owe them anything. We
have $19.5 billion in supplementary aid which is
compensating for the loss of oil revenue, but the
economic policy - if you can call it a policy - is not
conducive to any long-term growth.
"Ask the
people if they know what's happening in the private
sector and they are all aware that there is a flurry of
activity in the private sector, and they tell you that
there's either nothing available or that the salaries
are too low. Job creation is being left to the bankrupt
state, and wealth creation is going to people who don't
employ. The supplemental money should be a one-time
injection, but it is not being used to lay the
groundwork for a vigorous, autonomous economy. We are
headed toward the mafia capitalism of [Boris] Yeltsin's
Russia," said al-Khafaj.
Still, people hold out
hope. "Many people have hope the situation will
improve," said Qasim Hadi, secretary general of the
Union of the Unemployed, which claims to represent
300,000 people. "But I think this will dissipate. The
temporarily unemployed will turn into the permanently
unemployed. Then it is impossible to predict what people
in the streets will do."
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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