Uzbeks Pressured to Take Up Farming

Residents of a district of central Uzbekistan are being forced into raising livestock and growing fruit in an apparent attempt to improve food availability.

The strange campaign is taking place in Gallaoral district in the Jizak region, where anyone in paid employment – doctors, teachers and managers as well as farmers – is being urged to acquire 15 sheep, 100 chickens or geese, 70 saplings, and greenhouses for growing vegetables, and to take up fishing as well. Once each household has set aside enough to meet its own needs, the surplus produce must be sold at local markets, at low prices.

The initiative, called “Zarbdor – 90 Kun”, which translates as “90-Day Impact”, was approved by the district council at the end of last year. Time is now running out, and the district government chief has called for greater efforts to make it happen.

Residents of Gallaoral say officials are now visiting households on a regular basis to check on whether they are taking part. On the low wages paid in the public sector, many people cannot afford to buy farm animals, so officials are asking them to take out bank loans. Teachers earn an average of 120 US dollars a month, while a sheep can fetch 200 dollars on the open market.

As one schoolteacher said, “We live on very modest means and we can’t afford to pay off a loan since interest rates are out of reach for our family.”

Another resident said that buying fruit tree saplings, at around six dollars each, was too expensive given that there were limited sources of paid employment in the area.

The local authorities in Gallaoral refused to be interviewed.

The campaign is rumoured to stem from an order signed by President Islam Karimov, but NBCentralAsia has been unable to locate this document. If that is the case, it is possible the plan is being piloted in Jizak ahead of a broader nationwide campaign.

It is also possible that the initiative is the local authorities’ misinterpretation of a government programme to promote the private sector by encouraging, not forcing, new business start-ups through simpler bureaucracy, access to loans and tax breaks.

An analyst in the capital Tashkent, who did not want to be named, said it was just as likely that instructions had been issued from Tashkent, but only in verbal form, since officials lower down the scale in the country’s rigidly hierarchical political system were not given to taking the initiative themselves.

“It looks like the economic situation in the country is so fragile that the authorities have turned to taking away the minimal amount that people possess,” he said.

Gauhar Berdieva, who heads the Jizak branch of the Birdamlik opposition group, noted that officials including the Gallaoral local government chief continued to claim that Uzbekistan had emerged unscathed from the economic crisis affecting other countries.

“If it’s the case that things are going well, it isn’t clear why this campaign is needed. Why force people who are already poor to do something that’s beyond their capacity?” she asked.

Berdieva says she is now being pressured by the authorities after her group publicised the case in a press release last month.

This article was produced as part of IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.