About 9 trillion rials is annually spent on welfare projects, Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Ali Rabiee, said on Tuesday. “Although a huge amount of money is allocated every year to the welfare issues, a substantial portion of the country’s population are still suffering from poverty and food insecurity,” he was quoted by ILNA as saying. Rabiee also said, “We provide two pension funds with 2 trillion rials every year,” adding that the government believes that social security is people’s indispensable right and welfare policies must be supplemented with development and growth. He further said that the government is planning to identify the low-income strata of the society so that it is able to arrange for them what he called “a basket of social support.”
