Are Unemployed Afghans Interested in Work? https://youtu.be/Jugum9Dr6NE
Love Letter 1: Having Communal Fun in the Afghan Mountains so as to Stay Strong
Love Letter 2: Bringing the Sun Home to Prevent Mom’s Death
Love Letter 3: Embracing Our Equal Place and Work on Mother Earth
Love Letter 4: Humans can Help One Another, Now, and for a While More
Love Letter 5: Afghan Street Kids Survive Amidst a Selfish Economy
Love Letter 6: Are Unemployed Afghans Interested in Work?
Love Letter 7: Nonviolent Versus Violent Peace
Love Letter 8: Internally Displaced Afghans Learn to Calm Down
Love Letter 9: From Afghanistan, the Abolition of War
Love Letter 10: Revolutionary Relationships
A teenage boy sells Afghan soup,
which is a welcome hot mix of chickpeas and corn in a starchy broth
By Dr Hakim
12th March 2019
Dear friends,
Are unemployed Afghans interested in work?According to the Afghan Ministry of Economy, no!
On the 9th of December 2018, the International Labour Organization in Afghanistan reported that Afghanistan had the largest unemployed workforce in the world.
Then, at an Afghanistan Youth to Business Forum in Kabul a month later, the Afghan Ministry of Economy announced that “of the 15 million Afghan citizens who have the ability to work, 6.8 million are engaged in the job market, while others are not interested in seeking jobs.”
That is, 8.2 million or 54.7 % of the Afghan workforce are not engaged in the job market, and they are inexplicably not interested in seeking jobs.
???
There was no description about how the Afghan Ministry of Economy drew those conclusions about the unemployed, only a statement by the Deputy Minister of Economy, Mohammad Ismail Rahimi, saying, “From an economic point of view, almost half of the working age population is not interested in working.”
What a laughable discordance with reality. What crap!
I get irritated when government officials use clever words and statistics to cover up their weaknesses or their corrupt schemes.
But this irritation doesn’t worry me gravely, because when any populace has heard and seen enough of their government’s excuses and lies, they have a tendency to protest.
What I’m more worried about is that some of us unthinkingly believe what so-and-so says, even if it were just an unverified line in a Facebook post or a Tweet.
What I’m worried about is that we humans are giving up our ability to think.
So, I’ve posted some photos of the many Afghans working in the streets of Kabul. Afghans, like people everywhere, undertake every possible hard work just so that they can survive the callousness of the rich and powerful.
May the photos give us pointers to doubt, question, think and understand life, the economy and the meaning of work more clearly.
And then, with every ounce of compassion and non-academic intellect we can muster, may we speak out and take action!
Baa mihr ( With love ) !
Hakim
Balloons anyone? Deer, leopard or lion balloons?
Would you like to buy dates, or a sheep?
City Municipality workers clearing trash and cleaning the streets
Construction workers having a lunch break on a bridge
Arranging eggplants to attract customers
Triangular shaped ‘bolonis’,
which are thin-crusted flour pancakes with leek or potato fillings
Wear sunglasses or get some energy from bananas
A middle-aged vegetable seller
A roadside ‘teahouse’ serving samosas (potato puffs)
and tea from a “samowar” on the right
Having an economical roadside haircut
Carpentry
A candy floss man buys a piece of bread for himself
A thicker ‘boloni’ baked in the tandoor (traditional earth oven)
Selling onions. The poor, who may sometimes have nothing to eat except onions and some bread, have a saying, “Bread and onions gives an open forehead (open without frowns).”
Metalwork
A “nadaafi” using his special tools to beat and fluff up the cotton-filling of pillows and mattresses. Cotton pillows and mattresses are commonly used in Afghan homes in place of beds and chairs
The desperate job of begging
The lonely job of begging
Many unemployed Afghans work in Iran
and return to Afghanistan as drug addicts.
A young boy pulls a fully loaded wooden cart for a fee
A cobbler
Collecting re-usable trash to sell
Selling potatoes in packets of 7 kilograms each ( one “seer” ).
Potatoes are a favourite staple dish.
Tools to sharpen knives, scissors and chisels
Catching forty winks at his stationary stall
Repairing bicycles
A typical bazaar (market)
Repairing punctured tyres and filling tyres with appropriate air pressures
Ice cream carts are pushed through the streets
to the tune of “Happy birthday to you” blared through small loudhailers
Apples and Grapes. Afghanistan has an agricultural economy, with fruit contributing a fair share.
This labourer is paid one Afghani (US$0.013) for every one kilogram of wood he chops
Fish for home aquariums
Children and youth love to fly the kites in spring and autumn
Loading and unloading coal
The wheelbarrow workers are paid
by the distance over which they carry the loads
Making bricks
Selling tidbits in a park
Asking for alms by burning herbal incense.
It is believed that the incense chases away bad luck.
Falling asleep while waiting for customers
to have their weight taken for five Afghanis (US$0.068)
Daily wage labourers, at a roundabout, waiting to be hired.
No work means more worry and less food
Daily wage labourers are paid an average
of 250 Afghanis (US$3.38) for a full-day’s work.
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