Over 100 women civil servants sacked

Standing in front of women's affairs ministry gate, Simagul and four of her colleagues were remonstrating with the gatekeeper, who was refusing to let them in. Just a week earlier, the five civil servants had been treated with great respect when they had reported to the ministry as full-time employees. "I just want to know why we were sacked," the 40-year-old widow and mother-of-seven told IRIN in the capital, Kabul. Simagul is one of 112 women who were sacked by the ministry early this week. They were dismissed following a government re-evaluation of the administrative structure of some ministries, according to women's affairs ministry officials. "It is more than unjust when over 100 women are sacked from their jobs at a time when the government claims to be working for women's survival from the calamities of two decades of war," said Simagul, a seamstress with 16 years of experience, noting that many of the dismissed women were professionals, most of them also heads of their families. "Do they want us to beg on the streets?" she asked. Everyone had expected that the ministry would expand in 2003, "but unexpectedly it happened the other way round," she lamented. But, according to the ministry, most of those sacked were either completely unqualified or women with mere vocational skills. "The women's affairs ministry is a policy making body on gender issues. Unfortunately, policywise, we cannot keep most of the women with craft skills," Habiba Sarabi, the women's affairs minister, told IRIN on Wednesday. She said many of the women with needlework, embroidery, and tailoring skills were dismissed because the ministry did not have the capacity to place them according to their professions The ministry's decision came as a shock to most of the dismissed workers, who have no other source of income. "Thousands of women, and widows in particular, counted on this ministry as a leading body for solving their problems. Now they are losing hope, seeing the ministry stepping backwards," a woman needleworker and ex-employee of the ministry who declined to be identified told IRIN. She had expected that the ministry would help hundreds of unemployed women to find jobs, who were now in a state of shock. The ministry asserted that in addition to a lack of posts for certain professions, it was also a budgetary issue. "We have been given around US $500,000 as an annual budget. That would not be enough even for the current remaining staff," said Sarabi, declaring that her ministry would try to re-employ most the dismissed women once it had been restructured. "We have set up machineries in a separate compound to enable the dismissed workers to work there and be self-reliant," she stated. The ministry is the first of its kind in Afghanistan's government structure. Based on the Bonn accords, it was created early last year with the establishment of the interim administration. "Our mandate is to make a policy for the government for the betterment of women's lives," Sarabi said, noting that her ministry could not solve the unemployment problem, which was a huge challenge to the whole country. She stressed that the ministry was still employing over 1,300 women at its headquarters and its 27 provincial branches.