A group of men line up for their lunch break, making jokes and laughing as they pile food onto their trays. Each day, their breakfast, lunch and transportation is provided, in addition to the salaries they receive at the Kahi Dairy Factory in Qasir Ezdin Village in Dohuk.
Hishyar Khorshed, 28, is the longest tenured worker at the factory. He operates all the machinery with ease, and he’s in charge of helping the other workers mix materials for various milk and yogurt products manufactured at the factory. White milk speckles his black boots as it spills from the hoses pumping a fresh creamy yogurt into plastic tubs.
Recently, Hishyar started to train an influx of new workers that were hired as part of the $30,000 EDF grant Kahi Dairy received in 2021. The factory used its funding to buy a new production line, hire five workers, and expand its line of products.
A few years ago, Serbast Dewli Saeed, 20, was working at Kahi Dairy, but he was laid off in 2020 when production slowed down during the Covid-19 pandemic. Serbast was unemployed for months, before eventually finding work in a poultry factory. He described the working conditions there as untenable.
“I was only there for 15 days,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it.” Saeed said he’s very happy to be back at Kahi Dairy since they upped their production and started bringing back workers in 2021.
Because of the factory’s EDF grant, twenty year-old Hussein Ahmad was hired at Kahi Dairy three months ago. After a string of short-term jobs Hussein said he was grateful to find a job with long-term prospects where he can make connections and earn wages to support his family.
