Kaen supports his family of ten by finding plastic items in the landfill which his father sells.
The family lives in the Topchi neighborhood in the capital, but they are encroaching on public property.
“I have [seven] daughters and one son. Their work is to collect plastic materials and cans. I do not have a salary at all,” the child’s father, Kaen Mahdi, told Rudaw’s Mustafa Goran on Wednesday. “Once every two weeks, I sell them for 25,000-30,000 dinars," he added.
Iraqis have faced a surge in prices as they entered the holy month of Ramadan, a fall in the buying power of Iraqi dinar and increasing unemployment. According to a report published by the Iraqi planning ministry last year, the population of Iraq has exceeded 40 million people, more than half of which are between the ages of 15 and 64 years old.
"The poverty rate in 2019 was 19 percent, a rate which went up in 2020 and 2021 to nearly 25 percent, due to health, social and economic situations," Abdulzahra Al-Hindawi, spokesperson of the Iraqi Planning Ministry said, explaining that "Muthanna is the poorest province in Iraq because poverty is at 52 percent in it, followed by Diwaniyah and Dhi Qar provinces."
The country has almost exclusively relied on oil revenues since the US invasion in 2003. Iraq gets nearly 95 percent of its income from oil sales.
The World Food Programme (WFP) representative in Iraq has previously said that about three million people in Iraq suffer from "insufficient food consumption.”
According to the planning ministry, unemployment has stood at 30 percent.
