With the closure of the Asal (honey) ice cream factory in the city of Sanandaj, in Kurdistan province, 120 workers of this old factory were unemployed. The employer says: “The facilities that were promised to us were not paid.”

The state-run ILNA news agency reports that the ice cream factory “Honey of Kurdistan” has been closed for months, and workers are unemployed for nearly five months.

One of these workers says: “How many factories do you think there are in Kurdistan that if one is closed, we go to another one and get hired? Honey ice cream was closed, we are now stay-at-home.”

Seyyed Jamal Saedi, CEO and shareholder of the company, says about the reasons for closing down the factory: “It is not possible without a support to start-up again.”

“The Honey ice cream is the first ice cream factory in Kurdistan that has been active in the economy over the past ten years and even exported products to the neighbouring countries,” he said.

“We had 120 personnel. We launched the development plan of the complex and brought it into operation in 2015, along with the dairy and 500 cattle and livestock. We also invested 70 billion Toman for the development plan, and the working group on supporting the industry from the National Development Fund was supposed to pay 40 billion Toman to us, which has not paid yet,” he added.

Saedi, referring to the lack of support from government officials, said: “Until the eve of the New Year, we run the factory’s wheels without any support and on personal expenses until we ended up losing money and bankrupt and forced to shut down.”

“Most of our staff are ladies, and this unemployment puts a lot of pressure on them,” he said.

Source » ncr-iran