Deputy Medicalian: 31,000 Villages in Iran Have Become Abandoned

The Deputy President of Iran for Rural Development and Underprivileged Areas stated that out of 69,000 villages in the country, only 38,000 are inhabited, leaving 31,000 villages abandoned. Abdul Karim Hosseinzadeh said on Tuesday, November 14, at a nationwide housing foundation conference that in 1976, about 70% of the population lived in villages and 30% in cities, but this ratio has now reversed, leading to widespread rural migration. World Bank statistics indicate that the proportion of the rural population to the total population in Iran has dropped from 66% in 1961 to 51% in 1978, continuing its downward trend during the Islamic Revolution to fall to 23% last year. The Deputy President further stated that a combination of factors such as a lack of job opportunities, declining quality of life, social changes, low income, and climate change have posed serious challenges to Iranian villages. The average household expenditure for urban and rural families last year was 137 million and 79 million tomans, respectively. While there is an expectation to maintain the rural population, rural inflation is nearly on par with urban inflation, and widespread unemployment, a water crisis, lack of facilities, and insufficient government support for farmers have also posed problems for rural households. For example, estimates from the Statistical Center of Iran show that only 40% of the rural population is employed, and 11.5% of these individuals work less than 44 hours a week, which is considered underemployment. In contrast, the rate of underemployment among urban residents is 6.7%. Another notable point is that 43% of the rural population is active in agriculture, a sector facing increasing water crises and lack of government support. Ali Akbar Mehrabian, the Minister of Energy in the thirteenth government, announced last summer that 10,000 villages in the country lack access to drinking water; in other words, more than a quarter of the villages in the country do not have drinking water. Simultaneously, Majid Aghazadeh, the engineering deputy of the state water and wastewater company, reported a water crisis in 27,000 villages in Iran with a population exceeding 10 million. Thus, over 70% of the country's villages are facing a water crisis.