TEHRAN -- Iran has launched a drastic plan that could send hundreds of thousands of illegal Afghan workers back to their home country in a bid to free up jobs for queues of domestic jobless, the official news agency IRNA reported Monday.

"The plan will cover a three-month period, whereby about 800,000 illegal Afghan workers will be screened and dealt with," the ministry's general director of foreign nationals employment, Mohammad Hassan Salehi Maram, was quoted as saying. "Currently, the number of Afghan residents in Iran is 3 million, out of whom about 1.3 million are working in various places," he said.

Temporary six-month work permits could be issued for foreign workers, including the Afghans, he explained, adding that the permits would only apply to three sectors of "brick-burning plants, construction, and agriculture."

"After three months, the [tracking] plan will be repeated until no more illegal foreign nationals remain in the country," Salehi Maram added.

The interior ministry's figures have put the number of registered Afghan nationals at more than 1 million - up 8.5 percent from February. According to interior ministry estimates, some 950,000 more are reported to be living in the country illegally. But some unofficial reports said that only a few thousand illegal Afghans have a work permit.

The drive will see employers rewarded if they lay off unregistered workers and possibly jailed if they fail to do so. "The employers who do not report their illegal Afghan workers will be fined and jailed," the student news agency ISNA quoted Salehi Maram as saying. "On the other hand, if they are replaced with Iranian unemployment pensioners, the employers will be given loans and exempted from insurance fees for the new workers for four years," he added.

The move is to reinforce the constitution, which bans foreign nationals from being employed in Iran without work permits under the labor law.

Iran took in hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees during the wars that have ravaged Afghanistan over the past three decades and was a leading foe of the Taliban regime that was ousted by a US invasion in 2001.

But since President Hamid Karzai took office in Afghanistan on a mandate to bring stability and peace, Tehran has been actively encouraging Afghans to return home.

In February, Iran launched a three-month investigation aimed at reducing the number of Afghan illegals in the country.

Many Afghans in Iran work in the construction industry or housekeeping and janitoring, and tend to be paid less than their Iranian counterparts.

However, despite a grave youth unemployment problem, many educated Iranians believe that they are above taking the types of jobs that Afghans are willing to accept.

In the current Iranian year, the unemployment rate was 10.2 percent, showing a decrease compared to the preceding year's 11 percent, according to the head of state statistics organization, Mohammad Madadi.

He also put the unemployment rate for youth between the ages of 15 and 24 at 20.9 percent.