Iran’s Tabnak news website reports (Persian) that customs workers, labor activists and merchants in the Arvand Free Zone have stopped cooperation with the zone’s management and are forcing commercial goods to be re-routed to the nearby port of Khorramshahr. At issue is a 2% discount in rates that the Free Zone management claims to be the result of a directive from the High Secretariat of Free Zones – a claim the workers deny.
The piece dances around larger problems afoot in Khuzestan, Iran’s southwestern province along the border with Iraq, home to the bulk of the country’s Arab population. Residents are said to be resentful that Ahmadinejad has brought in members of his clique to run the Free Zones at the expense of locals, and there are intimations that dealings in the zone are far from transparent.
While there is nothing in the piece that would suggest that this is anything other than a local dispute, Mohsen Kashmirian, the president of the Khorramshahr Worker’s Rights Organization, is quoted lamenting the economic mismanagement that is a central critique of Ahmadinejad’s presidency:
While in past years the Arvand free Zone had been a huge source of income thanks to the customs and trade workers, unfortunately we see that the zone’s management – especially the present administration – have not shown the commitment necessary to building a platform for growth of trade and commerce at the port – only a neutral and ineffective organization.
-WW
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