On International Workers Day.. Yemeni workers celebrate the day of starvation and indebtedness

While all the world’s other Governments and peoples honor their workers in various sectors, on the occasion of International Workers Day, which falls on the first of May every year, Yemeni workers salute this day with more systematic starvation that the Houthis and the internationally recognized government have chosen for them.

Since the coup of the Houthis on September 21, 2014, the situation of millions of employees and workers throughout the country, like the rest of the citizens, has taken a critical curve, as they laid off thousands of government employees, and refused to pay the salaries of hundreds of thousands of others for more than five years, while millions in the private sector lost their jobs, as a result of the migration of capital and the increase in levies and royalties imposed on them under many names.

On the other hand, the picture was similar for the employees in the liberated areas. The legitimate government, although committed to paying salaries, is not regular on a monthly basis, and on the other hand, thousands of employees displaced to it from Houthi controlled-areas are subject to restrictions and abuses.

Not just this, but also financial and administrative corruption, exclusion with regard to the government of Aden, racism with regard to the Houthis, double standards, employment and appointment in violation ... All of this and so, were a major cause of the collapse of the local economy by more than 500 percent compared to the period before the outbreak of the war.

Many government and private sector employees say that government and private salaries are no longer able to cover their expenses and basic needs.
With the loss of the currency, the same percentage that the economy lost, and it is also the same percentage that salaries lost from their value, the employee working in the country is celebrating on the day of his starvation, especially the psychological pressures produced by this suffering and the inflation of their indebtedness which prompted dozens of them, to end their lives by committing suicide.

Indebtedness

Indebtedness for this segment is the most. After being stranded as a result of many of them losing their available sources of income, more than 60% of them depend on debts to cover their needs for food, subsistence needs, rations, education, electricity and housing rents, according to many workers in different sectors.

Teachers come the second place after employees of the Ministries of Defense and Interior in terms of the percentage of wages, while the employees of the rest of the government institutions, the majority of the employees of the sectors of private institutions and workers with daily wages, receive less than that, and thus their suffering is multiplied over others.

Economists attributed the causes of suffering to many ill-conceived practices of the government and the Houthis, including the transfer of the functions of the Central Bank of Yemen from Sanaa to Aden without any arrangement to avoid its consequences and damages, which emerged from the currency division, corruption, appointments according to criteria of nepotism, the absence of a serious economic vision to revive the economy, the corruption of the organizations operating in the country...etc.