TEHRAN - The budget for implementing the law on family and youth support has decreased by 37.5 percent compared to the year before.

The national budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year 1402, which starts on March 21, has allocated 75 trillion rials (about $185 million) to the issue, compared with 120 trillion rials approved for the current year, ISNA reported.

Meanwhile, in the next year’s budget bill, neither the Ministry of Education nor the Ministry of Health has a separate line of credit for carrying out the law.

The budget bill has mandated the Ministry of Transport and Urban Development to allocate a piece of land or a residential unit for free to families with four or more children in order to support the family and youth.

The administration is obliged to provide civil and military employees, as well as faculty members of universities and higher education and research institutions with increasing special payments for children and families by one hundred percent and fifty percent, respectively, from the beginning of the current year for five years.

In April 2022, by a decree issued by President Ebrahim Raisi, the "Law on Family and Youth Support" approved by the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) was notified to the Ministry of Health and the Vice Presidency for Women and Family Affairs.

The Guardian Council approved the law on November 17, 2021, to implement a population growth and family support plan for 7 years to change the declining trend of childbearing.

The plan stipulates health insurance for infertile couples, providing services and facilities to working women, providing health and nutrition support packages to mothers and children, educational opportunities for student mothers, providing livelihood support to families, and ongoing medical services to pregnant women.

The Law also describes the conditions for maternity leave. The duration of maternity leave was increased to 9 months with the payment of all salaries and related bonuses, and if the mother requests, up to two months of this leave can be used in the final months of pregnancy, which is 12 months for the birth of twins and multiples.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has always emphasized the need for paying attention to population growth and childbearing, so everyone is required to be aware and do their duty to get the country out of the current situation in the coming years.

The downward trend of Iran’s population growth stopped for the first time in the past [Iranian calendar] year (March 2021-March 2022), Hesamoddin Allameh, the secretariat of the National Council of the Elderly, has said.

It was predicted that population growth would stop in 2052 and decline to a negative rate, but if the current trend continues for the next 10 years, the population growth rate may not stop, he noted.

MG