BAGHDAD - The Iraqi people are suffering from a desperate lack of jobs, housing, health care and electricity, according to a survey by Iraqi authorities and the United Nations released on Thursday.
Planning Minister Barham Saleh, during a ceremony in Baghdad, blamed the dire living conditions in most of the country on decades of war but also on the shortcomings of the international community.
"The survey, in a nutshell, depicts a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq," Saleh said in English at the event, attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's deputy representative in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura.
The 370-page report entitled "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004" was conducted over the past year on a representative sample of 22,000 families in all of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Eighty-five percent of Iraqi households lacked stable electricity when the survey was carried out. Only 54 percent had access to clean water and 37 percent to sewage.
"If you compare this to the situation in the 1980s, you will see a major deterioration of the situation," said the newly-appointed minister, pointing out that 75 percent of households had clean water two decades ago.
The report "shows a contrast between the potential of Iraq, with all the human and natural resources that we have, and the unfortunate lack of development and lack of quality of life we are suffering from," Saleh said.
The survey put the unemployment figure at 18.4 percent, but Saleh explained that "under-employment" topped the 50-percent mark.
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