An Afghan girl looks out of a beauty salon in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, September 16, 2021.
The interim mayor of Afghanistan’s capital says the country’s new Taliban rulers have ordered many of the city’s female employees to stay at home.
Hamdulla Namoni told reporters on Sunday that only women allowed to go to work cannot be replaced by men. He says this includes skilled workers in the design and engineering departments as well as female attendants of public toilets for women.
Namani’s comments were another sign that the Taliban are enforcing their own harsh interpretation of Islam, including a ban on women in public life, despite their early promises of tolerance and inclusion. In its previous regime in the 1990s, the Taliban barred girls and women from schools and jobs.
The mayor says that the final decision regarding female employees in Kabul municipal departments is still pending, and they will receive their salaries in the meantime.
He says that before the Taliban took over Afghanistan last month, only a third of the city’s 3,000 employees were women, working in all departments.
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