A member of Islamic Republic parliament’s social commission says one million more people have become slum dwellers in the past 12 months, because of rising cost of living.
There are varying estimates about the population of Iran’s shanty towns; ranging from 13 million to 19 million.
Ali Kord, the member of parliament who spoke to ILNA news agency says, “The government did not have much success in dealing with slums last year and in fact because of rising prices and housing costs, one million people were added to the populations of slums”.
Iran has been in the grips of an economic crisis for the past 15 months, with its currency losing most of its value, fueling inflation, unemployment and poverty.
Iran’s Ministry of Roads and Urban Development last July announced that 19 million people live in shanty towns around cities, a figure that constitutes 24 percent of the country’s population.
The ministry labels them “urban homeless” and most come from underdeveloped rural areas, especially regions close to Iran’s borders.
Slums are not just a problem for large cities. There are hundreds of towns with their own slums.
