They found that trains in the impoverished districts of south Tehran were mainly used by vendors aged between 35 and 50, selling headscarves, cheap clothes and sweets
Shahrzad News: Widespread unemployment and a lack of job prospects have driven many young Iranians to become street vendors, some of them earning a meagre living in the dimly-lit tunnels of Tehran's Metro.
In a special report on this new phenomenon, the Farda News website asked several such vendors why they had resorted to the activity. All cited poverty, explaining that they worked on the metro because the streets were already full of competitors. They would board a carriage at one station and leave it at the next, before staff had a chance to caution them.
The Farda News report also compared the social background of vendors with the underground lines they operate on. They found that trains in the impoverished districts of south Tehran were mainly used by vendors aged between 35 and 50, selling headscarves, cheap clothes and sweets. Younger vendors favoured the more affluent areas, selling cosmetics and fake jewelery. Most of those interviewed were educated and had been out of work since finishing their studies. They tended to make between eight and fifteen thousand tomans a day.
Source: Shahrzad News
