Germany | Former Afghan minister delivers pizza by bicycle

Sayet Sadaat was Minister of Communication in Afghanistan, between 2016 and 2018, but in 2021 it is refugee Afghan to Germany and he earns his living by delivering food to homes, by bicycle, in the city of Leipzig.

FAn official under President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who held the post from 2014 until his resignation last August when the Taliban arrived in Kabul following a relentless civil war that escalated last May, when the United States government announced that it would withdraw its troops from the Asian country. In September 2020, Sayet Sadaat, who is now 49, applied to Germany What refugee and he got it.

According to Reuters, Sayet Sadaat spends four hours a day learning the German language; at night and on weekends, the Afghan refugee puts on the orange uniform of the company that employs him, Lieferando, and travels the streets of Leipzig on his own bicycle, to deliver Pizza home.

“There is nothing to be ashamed of, it is a job like any other,” said the former Afghan minister when the news reached the press and the AFP agency went to interview him. “I did not find a job to match my qualifications and my abilities,” he explained all the same.

Sayet Sadaat says he is proud to add 1,200 kilometers of routes all over town for a month. “I could have been one of those corrupt ministers, I could have made millions of dollars (…) and I wouldn’t have needed to work, but I’m proud, my soul is at peace and I don’t I don’t have to feel guilty about anything, ”he confessed.

For this work, Sayet Sadaat receives 15 euros per hour; that is to say 50% less than the minimum wage in Germany. We can guess in any case that his financial situation is precarious, even if he says that what he earns is sufficient to cover his needs.

Afghan refugees

The Taliban advanced on various Afghan enclaves until they took the capital of Acceptance and caused the resignation of former President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai on August 15 this year. Three days later, it emerged that he and his entire family had been received in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, “for humanitarian reasons.”

Since then, an incessant evacuation of the afghans which had collaborated with the armed forces of the Western coalition, which numbered 16,000 troops last year.

In recent months, the The United Kingdom of Great Britain received 14,000 people -Most Afghans- asylum seekers and refugees. Germany and France are said to have hosted 5,300 and 2,800 people respectively, and most of them are – already – Afghan refugees.

At France, reports Le Parisien, they could be faced with the same precarious situation as the former Afghan minister Sayet Sadaat. According to this publication, the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Expatriates (OFPRA, for its acronym in French) received 8423 requests asylum since early 2021.

The year 2016, when Sayet Sadaat was appointed to his post in the Afghan executive, was the one with the highest number of casualties among the civilian population -11,418-, since the United States invaded Afghanistan to end terrorism international.

MM CP