The Manual Charcoal Factory

– (2020 Grant recipients of Pulitzer Center)

This manual charcoal packaging workshop is located in the city of Gorgan, in the province of Golestan, Iran. The workshop employs ten workers, of whom six are women, and has been in business for four years. The plant closed, like many other businesses, due to the coronavirus outbreak. But only three days after closing, its employees began calling continuously, asking to return to work.  “After that, we started working again at the request of the employees,” says the workshop manager. These simple workers have no personal or employment insurance to cover them if they stop working. Most of them are the sole breadwinners of their families, and therefore have no choice but to keep working, despite the significant threat of exposure to the Coronavirus or the risk of transferring the virus to their loved ones.