TEHRAN – The Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build 50,000 houses for the underprivileged families residing in rural areas.

As per the MOU, 50,000 deprived families will become house owners across the country.

To empower the vulnerable groups of the society, including, financially struggling families, provision of housing is of great importance, which is a priority to the Relief Foundation, Morteza Bakhtiari, head of the Foundation has stated.

He went on to state that these residential units will be completed and provided to the families by the next 24 months, IRIB reported on Wednesday.

Most recently, Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation provided 9,305 housing units to the deprived families during Ten-Day Fajr celebrations (January 31-February 10, marking the 42nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution).

Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation works to provide employment in deprived areas and empowers financially struggling families, other services such as building or buying housing, cultural services, medical services, and other facilities are provided, for example, in the field of treatment, more than 80,000 patients of incurable diseases are currently under the Foundation’s coverage.

Rural development

In Iran, where villages account for generating 20-23 percent of the value-added in the country, the development of rural areas has been always a top agenda of the governments’ activities.

The sustainable economic, social, and cultural development of the villages is one of the major priorities of the current government, and many projects implemented and underway in this regard have led to outstanding development in the rural regions.

Many other efforts have been made over the past couple of years by the government to support villagers and slow down the trend of migration from rural areas to cities while decreasing rural community dependency on one main economic sector (agriculture, forestry, energy, or mining), including rural tourism, agritourism, religious tourism, and ecotourism.

Currently, 26 percent of the country's population lives in villages, around 39,000 villages have more than 20 households and 23,000 villages have less than 20 households.

Mohammad Omid, the vice president for rural development, said in November 2020 that for the first time in the country, the migration of people from rural areas to cities has reached zero.

A total of 220 trillion rials (nearly $5.6 billion) has been approved for the development of villages in the current year (March 2020-March 2021), Omid said.

Some 140 trillion rials (about $3.3 billion) have so far been spent, he noted, adding, the unemployment rate in rural areas has reached 7.4 percent, which has decreased by over one percent compared to last year.

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