ADEN, Yemen, May 1 (Xinhua) -- More than 5 million Yemeni workers lost their jobs as a result of the years of war in the impoverished Arab country, Yemen's Minister of Social Affairs and Labor said Wednesday.
According to a statement by the Yemeni minister Ebthaj Al-Kamal carried by state-run Saba News Agency, 5 million workers of Yemen's private sector, accounting for about 60 percent of the labor force, were deprived of their jobs as a consequence of the ongoing war.
She said the instability forced many local and foreign companies to cease their operations and activities in the war-ravaged country.
The Yemeni government has made hard efforts to improve the economic situation through re-invigorating development programs in different fields, the statement said.
The government started with certain measures to reduce the workers' sufferings by declaring a 30-percent increase in salaries for all government employees, it noted.
Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Houthi rebels overtook the capital Sanaa and toppled the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Houthis since March 2015, a long-running war which has left tens of thousands dead or injured including at least 17,700 civilians as verified by the United nations.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, an estimated number of 3.3 million people remain displaced in 2019, up from 2.2 million last year.
The number of sites hosting the internally displaced people has increased by almost half over the past year.
