Melbourne, June 10 : A major Iranian state-owned company, Pars Special Economic Energy Zone, has told its single employees to get married by September or face losing their jobs.

“One of the economic entities in the south of the country has asked its single employees to start creating a family,” news. com. au quoted the hardline Kayhan daily, as saying.

The directive, signed by the head of security of the “Pars Special Economic Energy Zone”, also used some of sayings (hadith) to encourage employees to marry.

It said employees' contracts would be annulled by October 22 if they were still found to be single.

The giant energy zone of refineries is located on Iran's southern coastal energy hub Assalouyeh where temperatures reach 50 Celsius in summer, hardly a place for families.

“Unfortunately some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single,” Etemad quoted the company’s directive, as saying.

“As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty,” it added.

Sexual relations outside of marriage is illegal in Iran -- for the most part a traditional society where young people normally are encouraged by their families to marry in their
20s.

The country is also in the midst of an unprecedented moral crackdown, which has seen tens of thousands of women warned by the police for dress, deemed to be unIslamic. (ANI)