UNDP acts on Baghdad unemployment

Isam Shawkat, who graduated in 1983 as an agricultural engineer, has never had a job relevant to his qualifications, just like many other residents of the poor and crowded district of Al-Bayya in southwestern Baghdad. He used to work on processing customs declarations for an oil company at Al-Qa'im, on the border with Syria. But now that the US-led administration has officially given exporters a three-month tax break to kick-start the Iraqi economy, that job has gone. "Many people in this area are jobless, and because many people are poor, most of them haven't finished their studies," Shawkat said. In prewar days, "if anyone from the Shiite people who live here had [a] close relative who had been executed by the government, it was even more difficult to find work or apply for any post-high school studies", he noted. Because Al-Bayya has a Shiite majority of around 85 percent, there were already many unemployed people. "All the jobs were restricted to Ba'thists,", Shawkat said, and there were no jobs open to Shiites in sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, security, the military or local government. "I work as a builder, and there is no building [activity] in these poor areas, so I always had to search for work in other areas. Now, after the war and the destruction, there is no building even in rich areas, at least for a while, so there is no work for me," Hasan Zahir told IRIN. But Zahir has not stood idle since the war ended. Like many Iraqis, he wants to contribute to the post-Saddam nation. He has volunteered to work for the new local council formed after the war. "I did this to help clean the institutions of the Ba'thists, who were responsible for the lack of services and jobs in this area," he said. Rami Baroudi, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) official responsible for the Iraq Reconstruction and Employment Programme, told IRIN that unemployment had been very high since the first Gulf War in 1991, but had worsened in recent months. "There is no income due to the war, no government services, no leadership, so we are trying to generate jobs for the most vulnerable areas in the city," he said. In Al-Bayya and Al-Za'faraniyah districts, the programme comprises rubbish collection, road repairs, basic rehabilitation of primary health-care centres and about 200 schools. The plan is to hire approximately 2,000 workers per day for a period of three months to do the cleaning and rehabilitation work in the two districts. Rubbish collection in Al-Bayya began two weeks ago on a daily basis, helping up to 400,000 people lead cleaner, healthier lives. Muhammad Abbas, who works on the rubbish collection programme in Al-Bayya, said that although his job was only temporary, it was nonetheless helpful. "I take 4,000 dinars [US $3.50] to lift the rubbish every day, so it's getting much better. Most of the families I know here have only one person working, if any, since the war," he said. UNDP has developed a close working relationship with members of the town council and municipality by including all stakeholders and leaders in making decisions on priority areas. "We are targeting the four poorest areas in Baghdad - Al-Bayya, which we already started working in with the rubbish-collection activity, and then the other three areas are Al-Za'faraniyah, Al-Hurriyah and Al-Sha'b," Baroudi said.