By: Rukhshana Media
Female employees in health and educational centers must travel to work with a male chaperone, the Taliban’s Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice directorate in Kandahar province has ordered.
In an audio message heard by Rukhshana Media, Abdul Rahman Tayebi, the head of the directorate, said female employees do not have the right to go to their offices without a male escort.
He said that the decision was made in the administrative assembly at the Taliban governor’s office in Kandahar.
In response, a health official of Daman district of Kandahar province messaged officers at the district clinic: “All female employees, nurses, and vaccinators should not come to the clinic from tomorrow. First, go to the morality police, and solve your issue.”
The Daman district message said the employees need a letter from a health official showing they have permission to work in the district.
A source, on the condition of anonymity, told Rukhshana Media on Monday that in Kandahar’s Dand district they were told by the head of the clinic that according to the decision of the Virtue and Vice head of the Taliban they must no longer attend the clinic without a male chaperone (mahram).
According to the source, if they disobey the order, they will be fired.
A nurse in a clinic located in District Eight of Kandahar province, who does not want to be named, said in a telephone interview with Rukhshana Media on Monday that the female employees had been told not to come to the clinic without a male chaperone “starting tomorrow.”
“We are told that the decision was made by the directorate of Virtue and Vice of the province,” she says.
This decision poses many challenges for them. “We pay 3000 AFN commuting to the clinic out of 15,000 afghanis, an amount equal to $166 USD per month we receive as salary,” she said. “Now, we have to pay that amount for our mahram.”
The source said that some of her female colleagues do not have a mahram.
“Fathers of some of my colleagues are elderly men,” she says. “How is a woman, who is the breadwinner of a family, meant to get to work in this situation?”
Since regaining to power, the Taliban have banned women from many public spaces, schools, universities, working at local and international NGOs, and closed all opportunities for girls’ education beyond elementary school.
