DUBAI (Reuters) – Oil workers staged a protest in southern Iran on Saturday demanding higher wages and pensions, according to videos and reports posted on social media.
Worker protests reportedly unverifiable by oil Reuters come amid an ongoing wave of popular unrest across Iran that constitutes a self-1979 revolution in the Islamic Republic of Iran Most daring challenge ever.
Iran’s oil ministry had no immediate comment on the reported oil worker protests. Iranian media often do not report details of the current unrest in the country.
A group of oil workers protested outside the Pars oil and gas company in Asaluyeh, Bushehr province, in the southern Gulf, activist HRANA news agency said.
said that in addition to wages and pension bonuses, the removal of high income taxes and salary caps, and improvements in welfare services and health conditions are also demands of protesting workers.
“We don’t want a lying minister,” was heard chants of Asaluyeh workers in a video broadcast by HRANA, referring to Oil Minister Javad Owji. Asaluyeh is at the center of Iranian facilities developing the world’s largest offshore gas field, which Iran shares with Qatar on the opposite side of the Gulf.
HRANA and other social media published videos and photos of similar protests by oil workers in the oil-rich Khuzestan province capital Ahvaz, Gachisaran and Mahshahr .
Workers at the Tang-e Bijar in the west and Gonabad gas facilities in the northeast, as well as firefighters on the Gulf island of Kharg, Iran’s main oil exporter, also staged protests, according to social media reports.
Reuters could not immediately verify any of the videos or social media accounts.
The wider unrest currently gripping Iran was sparked by the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who A 22 year-old woman was arrested for wearing “inappropriate attire” under Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.
Forty years ago, a combination of mass protests and strikes by oil workers and bazaar traders helped bring Iran’s Shiite Muslim clerics to power.
