Employees of 'Samen al-Hojaj' Institute Protest in Eight Cities in Iran

Employees of the 'Samen al-Hojaj' Institute gathered in front of the provincial governorates in eight cities in Iran to protest against the 'uncertainty of their employment status'. ILNA news agency reported on Tuesday, February 7, that a group of employees from this institute gathered in front of the governorate buildings in Gilan, Qazvin, Kerman, Kurdistan, Ardabil, Fars, Razavi Khorasan, and Mazandaran. One employee of the financial and credit institute 'Samen al-Hojaj' estimated the number of employees of this institute across Iran to be 2,700, who were previously active in 470 branches. According to him, these employees have been left in limbo for about a year due to the dissolution of the institute and have no clear job status. As this employee stated, despite the transfer of this institute to 'Parsian Bank' and the holding of a recruitment exam for 1,500 people by this bank, the results of this exam have not yet been announced. He said, 'Over the past year, since the activities of Samen al-Hojaj have been halted, some of its employees have not found jobs to meet their living needs and are currently struggling to get by.' These employees had previously protested in front of the Parliament and the Central Bank, but these protests have so far been fruitless. The 'Samen al-Hojaj' credit institute was one of the financial institutions that was dissolved recently, affecting thousands of depositors. Parsian Bank has been designated as the bank responsible for resolving the deposits of this institute, and the employees of this institute are also expected to be employed by Parsian Bank. Parsian Bank had also announced last year that the repayment of deposits from the 'Samen al-Hojaj' financial and credit institute would be carried out based on small amounts by Parsian Bank. The status of the banking system and financial and credit institutions in Iran has been reported as 'critical', with the Research Center of the Parliament warning about the 'risk of bankruptcy' of these institutions. According to this center, out of 7,333 financial institutions in the country, only 1,000 have licenses, and the 'Samen al-Hojaj' institute was among the unlicensed institutions. The Research Center also reported that from 1972 to 2011, the volume of banking activities by non-bank financial institutions has nearly tripled. Based on this report, a large part of Iran's monetary market is 'outside the regulatory and supervisory framework of the monetary authority', and out of 7,333 financial institutions in the country, 6,033 do not have licenses. The Research Center also stated that six 'unauthorized' credit institutions have about 133 trillion tomans, which is about six percent of the total assets of the authorized and unauthorized banking system, in liquidity.