Night-time traffic curfews have been in place in cities across Iran for the best part of 11 months now. According to the rules, people are not allowed to drive private vehicles on the public highway from 10pm to 3am, or they risk a fine of 200,000 tomans (US$48).
Within weeks of the restrictions being imposed, provincial officials warned it was not being effectively enforced. Now Dr. Alireza Zali, director of the Tehran Coronavirus Taskforce, has baldly stated: “The night-time curfew has had no effect on controlling the pandemic or family gatherings.”
At a meeting of the taskforce last Wednesday, Tehran provincial Governor Mohsen Mansouri also announced that the lifting of the curfew was under consideration in the capital. Following these statements on October 28, Mohsen Farhadi, a Health Ministry official in charge of workplace safety, announced that a new project by the name of “smart restrictions management” had been placed on the agenda of the National Coronavirus Taskforce.
To implement this project, Farhadi said, it would be necessary to link up the various IT systems belonging to the Health Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the traffic police. He did not specify a timeframe, but added: “The moment the information systems are connected and the project starts, night-time traffic curfews will be lifted, and those who have a vaccination certificate will be free to travel between provinces.”
How Much Did the Government Make from Fines?
Like other datasets related to the coronavirus pandemic in Iran, the number of people who have been fined for violating the curfew is not widely available. According to Anooshirvan Mohseni Bandpey, Tehran’s former provincial governor, from when the rules came into effect on November 21, 2020 to January 20, 2021, some 2.2 million fines were issued to drivers across the country. The government thus made at least 440 billion tomans (close to $106 million) in just the first two months.
At the time, Mohseni Bandpey praised the curfew as “one of the most effective measures in reducing the spread of coronavirus.”
Tehran’s traffic police alone reported that 620,000 vehicles had been identified by surveillance cameras and were fined for violating the curfew from November 21, 2020, to April 25, 2021. If all fines were collected, Tehran citizens would have paid a total of 124bn tomans (close to $30m) in fines during this period. Assuming the figures remained stable over 11 months and all violators were identified, in Tehran province alone about $54m in fines would have been dished out in less than a year.
Elsewhere in Razavi Khorasan province, officials have claimed 4,000 to 6,000 drivers are fined on a nightly basis: amounting to between 24bn tomans (nearly $58m) and 36bn tomans (more than $8.66 m) per night. In an 11-month period, municipal officials could have been chasing 264bn ($63.5m) to 396bn tomans ($95m) worth of fines.
According to Qazvin police, in six months starting from March 21, 62,440 cars were fined for violating the curfew, netting around 12.5bn tomans ($29m). The figures were similar in Golestan, where traffic police reported fining 65,000 drivers in five months after Iranian New Year, worth 13bn (more than $31m).
Unfortunately, how much of this money was actually collected by the police and municipal authorities remains anyone’s guess, in the absence of accurate figures published by the Health Ministry, the traffic police or the Interior Ministry.
Whatever the answer, fines do not appear to be having the desired effect: in September 2021, quoting an informed source at the National Coronavirus Taskforce, the newspaper Hamshahri reported that just during the two-week lockdown imposed by the taskforce during the Shia holy month of Muharram, more than 540,000 people violated the night-time traffic curfew in Iran.
According to the same report, as of September 22 the authorities had received a nationwide grand total of 220 billion tomans ($53 million) in paid fines. Using the stated figures above as a base, it can be assumed this accounts for around 10 percent of all fines issued. Hamshahri added that members of the National Coronavirus Taskforce had been “discussing” measures to better enforce the payment of fines, such as imposing deadlines.
Why is the Curfew Still On?
After the fourth and fifth waves of coronavirus in Iran, when even the official, under-reported number of daily Covid-19 fatalities exceeded 700, Iranians appear to be less inclined to observe the curfew. Some have reportedly tried to bypass it by manipulating their license plates, or by registering as “internet taxis” so they can get a permit to drive during the off-limits hours.
Police appear to be mystified as to why the curfew is even still in place. On October 11, General Kamal Hadianfar, commander of the National Traffic Police, said all Covid-related restrictions on vehicles were proposed by the Health Ministry and rubber-stamped by the National Coronavirus Taskforce, and the police simply carried them out. He added that at the height of the fifth peak this summer, the Health Ministry claimed the curfew had been effective in reducing the spread of the virus by 35 to 40 percent.
One of the most notable opponents of the curfew is now Dr. Alireza Zali, director of the Tehran Coronavirus Taskforce, even though on January 10 he had said the curfew had been effective in curbing the spread of the coronavirus in greater Tehran.
On September 7, Ali Khezrian, a member of the parliament from Tehran, said the government must not persist in continuing with past bad policy. He added that the curfew had had “no effect” in containing the contagion, and was only hurting poorer families already struggling to pay the exorbitant costs of healthcare if they had to get a relative to hospital at night.
Responsible officials do not want to admit they have made a mistake. In any case, the curfew is rapidly coming to look like yet another manifestation of pandemic mismanagement by the Islamic Republic, for which only ordinary people will have paid the price.
Official Coronavirus Statistics
According to the Health Ministry’s weekly statistics, a total of 1,112 patients are known to have lost their lives to Covid-19 in the week ending October 28. With 197 deaths, October 27 had the highest officially-recorded number of fatalities for the week.
At the week’s end, 4,078 Covid-19 patients in Iran were being treated in ICUs. According to the Health Ministry, at the time of writing the total number of vaccine doses injected, both first and second shots, had reached 84,528,037.
There are currently 22 Iranian cities on red alert for coronavirus transmission. Another 128 are rated orange and 215 are yellow. Currently 83 cities in Iran are on “blue” alert.
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