While workers and employees of Arvandan Oil and Gas Company have repeatedly protested against delays in the payment of salaries and benefits, the establishment of the Arvandan Mawkib at the Shalamcheh border terminal with extravagant costs, ordered by Hamid Deris, the company's CEO, has provoked the anger and dissatisfaction of the workers. The workers claim that this Mawkib was set up not out of sincerity but merely for invoicing and incurring expenses to promote the company's managers.
The Hidden Goals Behind the Mawkib Establishment
This Mawkib was set up at specific hours for filming and photographing the company's managers or so-called impromptu visits by some officials. The hypocritical nature of the hidden goals behind this Mawkib became more apparent when, in a coordinated promotional program, the governor of Khuzestan also attended this Mawkib with a media team and photographer and videographer.
According to documents, the managers of Arvandan Company claimed to have distributed about 650,000 hospitality packages among the pilgrims. Each package included a juice, a cake, and a bottle of mineral water. These items have a significant gap with the total amount of expenses invoiced from the company's financial resources. Informed sources have said that even if the cost of each hospitality package is considered around 50,000 tomans, the staggering figure of 30 billion tomans is reached. This figure is apart from invoicing and incurring expenses for other cultural packages, including shawls and hats, etc.
Heavy Costs and Workers' Protests
Additionally, another part of the invoices includes public relations forces and heavy transportation and logistics costs and services of Arvandan. According to available documents, the 30 billion tomans figure has been spent in the name of the company's Basij deputy. A noteworthy point about this seemingly cultural action is the closure of the Mawkib during many hours, and some forces affiliated with Arvandan have revealed that most of the time, the Mawkib was activated for hosting political and media figures and then closed.
Documents show that the total expenses incurred for this hypocritical Mawkib amount to about 50 billion tomans. Incurring expenses in areas solely for advertising in the interests of the company's managers coincides with a situation where many of the company's projects have been halted under the pretext of lack of budget, and workers' salaries have also been repeatedly delayed.