The Afghan government's seven-dollar-a-month wage hike for civil servants last week - the first since the Taleban government was removed four years ago - has met with derision and despair.
"They must be joking," teacher Farida Noor said of the rise, the equivalent of the cost of dinner for one in a good Afghan restaurant.
"What they've added to our already very, very low salary doesn't meet our needs and daily requirements," the veiled 35-year-old said from the bombed-out Kabul school where she ekes out a monthly wage of 2,500 afghanis (50 dollars), excluding the hike. "It's nothing."
Four years ago the mother of five wouldn't even have had a job: the fundamentalist Taleban did not allow women to work and they could only leave their homes under a blue burqa and with a male escort, even if only a boy.
But since the Taleban fled the ruined capital under a barrage of US bombs in late 2001, women have drifted back to the labour market and back to civil service salaries that have remained unchanged since hard-liners were removed.
At the same time scores of international aid and security groups have set up camp and prices have gone through the roof.
The cost of some basic items has increased around tenfold, with meat in particular becoming a luxury for many; an upmarket four-bedroomed house that cost 250 dollars under the Taleban now commands rental of 5,000 dollars.
The government's paltry concession to civil servants sent teachers - who are mostly women in Afghanistan - onto the streets in a rare protest in this still conservative society. They were particularly angry because they had been promised far higher increases.
"If things continue this way, we will not be able to work," teacher Nooria Khaliqi said. "It's not justice."
It also earned scorn on national television. "Businessmen will quit their businesses to get a government job now the salaries are so good," mocked one comedian.
Despite a flood of billions of aid dollars after the ouster of the Taleban, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world.
Education and basic health care is free; taxation is still to be introduced; electricity and public transport cost little but are patchy. But with inflation estimated at above 10 percent (2003), a family of five needs about 1,000 dollars a month to cover expenses.
"My salary is - let's say 60 dollars - but I'm paying 300 dollars for my apartment," customs office worker Azizullah Bakhtyar said.
Only monthly cash transfers from his brother living abroad enable him to keep his six-member family fed and clothed and in the two-storey, mud-brick house they share with another relative on a dusty, broken Kabul road.
"The rise announced will not help us," Bakhtyar said grimly.
Civil servants are among the lowest paid workers here, with a skilled labourer earning about three times more than a teacher. This means many use their salaries only as a supplement to the household income, put in minimum effort and save their energy for second jobs, or demand bribes.
While their salaries have stayed much the same, those of their counterparts in the private sector have increased several times, with a top private doctor earning about 3,000 dollars and Afghan NGO workers taking home between 500 and 2,000 dollars.
The government is aware it needs to cut thousands of jobs but is reluctant to merely abandon employees. And with around half the working budget of about six hundred million dollars provided by international donors who will not be around forever, it cannot afford major salary rises.
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