Marek Hosseini, who heads the Employment Association of Iran’s Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, said on Sunday that fewer than 700,000 Afghan refugees have left Iran as part of a programme that began in late June to deport the country.
“Based on official statistics… there are still around 5 million (Afghan refugees) in the country, most of whom work in the informal labor market,” according to news TV, Hosseini said in a news briefing.
Officials said that less than 10% of Afghanistan’s refugees, or nearly 434,000, have legal documents to live and work in Iran.
The comments come against the background of reports suggesting that Iran has deported Afghan refugees on a massive scale after Afghan nationals were arrested for promoting Israeli invasion of Iran.
Iranian security officials say the Afghans arrested in recent weeks are suspected of being involved in the sabotage and espionage carried out by Iran’s Israeli regime.
But economic experts warn that a large-scale deportation of Afghans from Iran could cause serious harm to the country’s labor market.
Hosseini said that more than half of Afghans who work legally in Iran are employed in the country’s construction sector, with nearly 19% of jobs in manufacturing plants and over 11% of them work in agricultural projects.
However, he said that the majority of Afghan refugees living in Iran without legal documents saying that nearly 3 million people work in family and group businesses added that their communities form a large part of Iran’s informal labor market.
MNA