Tag Archives: society

Turkmenistan uses forced labour for cotton harvest

JAN. 29 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Evidence is mounting that Turkmenistan, like neighbouring Uzbekistan, forces people to pick its giant cotton harvests each year.

A report by the opposition Alternative Turkmenistan News (ATN) group said that school children were forced into the cotton fields each year to harvest the crop.

Attention has focused more on Uzbekistan’s use of child labour in its cotton harvest; the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) is supposed to be releasing the results of its investigation later this year into this practise.

But ATN said that the practise is also widespread across the border in Turkmenistan.

Of course, although still important, cotton is not as important to Turkmenistan’s economy as it is to Uzbekistan’s economy. Uzbekistan grows roughly three times the amount of cotton as Turkmenistan.

Even so, Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has made a point of underlining how he has opened up the country and its cotton industry has been no exception. The authorities there want to build new cotton spinning plants and to increase exports of raw cotton overseas.

Perhaps the ILO should also be making plans for a trip to Turkmenistan.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Kazakhstan tightens weightlifting tests

JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s weightlifting federation has said it will tighten checks on its athletes, media reported. The announcement follows the embarrassing disclosure last year that nine weightlifters from Kazakhstan had taken performance enhancing drugs. Kazakhstan has to pay a $500,000 fine for the doping.

ENDS
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(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Azerbaijan warns banks over loans

JAN. 23 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank issued a stern warning to its domestic banks to tighten up checks they carry out on consumers before issuing loans. The Azerbaijani economy is booming but increasingly unsecured loans could derail this growth.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Gay men suffer abuses in Kyrgyzstan

JAN. 28 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report accusing police in Kyrgyzstan of deliberately extorting bribes from gay men. The HRW report accused the police of detaining, beating and raping homosexuals. The Kyrgyz authorities denied the allegations.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Internet penetration grows in Azerbaijan

JAN. 27 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Internet penetration hit 70% in Baku by the end of 2013, local media reported. Internet penetration is a decent benchmark of a country’s development although the hidden story behind the scale of the reach of the internet is whether it is restricted or heavily monitored. The authorities in Baku want internet penetration of 85%.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Azerbaijan’s Central Bank worries over bad loans

JAN. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s Central Bank ordered domestic banks to stop giving out loans to consumers so easily.

In a strongly worded statement, Azerbaijan’s Central Bank said lenders had not been doing enough due diligence on the financial security of consumers they were lending cash to.

“The Central Bank has assigned banks to intensify activities on issue of loans and enhance control over the field in line with responsible lending principles with an eye to further amplify banking sector’s financial sustainability,” the Azerbaijani Central Bank said.

The Central Bank appears to be reacting to a number of warnings from analysts who said that poorly secured loans and rising consumer debt are major risks to Azerbaijan’s economy.

Azerbaijan’s fuel-powered economy has picked up pace again since stumbling during the global economic crisis of 2008/9. In 2014, the economy is expected to grow by around 5%.

But overconfidence and slack controls threatens this economic growth. The Central Bank’s own figures showed that lending to consumers increased by nearly a third last year.

The Central Bank also appears to accuse commercial banks of aggressively selling loans to consumers and also warned them not to give out misleading information over the financial responsibilities of taking out loans.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Kazakh bureaucrat’s son released from prison

JAN. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The release from prison of Maksat Usenov, son of an executive working on Kazakhstan’s showcase EXPO-2017, triggered a rare show of online dissent.

Despite killing a man, prosecutors dropped the criminal case against Mr Usenov and converted his sentence into a fine after his father paid off the family of the dead man.

More than 16,000 people signed an online petition on the grassroots Avaaz.org website against Mr Usenov’s release.

This is a classic case of the children of the authorities having a more lenient ride than ordinary citizens.

In December 2013, Mr Usenov was speeding through Almaty in his luxury BMW X6 (prices start from around $75,000). He crashed at a busy intersection — there are many in Almaty — killed a bystander and injured five others.

Police detained Mr Usenov and were going to charge him with dangerous driving and manslaughter. Instead, his father, Kazhymurat Usenov, was able to pay off the family of the man he’d killed. The family dropped charges against Mr Usenov and the police let him free.

The whole episode gives a valuable insight into modern-day Kazakhstan.

(News report from Issue No. 169, published on Jan. 29 2014)

Pension reform triggers protests in Armenia

JAN. 18 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — An estimated 4,000 people protested in central Yerevan against planned changes to the pension system. The protest dispersed quietly. The change in the pension law means that people aged 40 or under will have to pay 5% of their salary into a pension. Like other states in the former Soviet Union, Armenia needs to reform a pension scheme now considered overly generous.

(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)

Uzbek president’s daughter starts fashion project

JAN. 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Gulnara Karimova, the embattled eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, said via twitter that she is working on a new design project. The announcement triggered speculation from analysts that she is trying to normalise her schedule after clashing with rivals in Uzbekistan’s intelligence services.

(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)

Turkmenistan ends free gas

JAN. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmenistan’s president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, said he was ending free gas in order to encourage people to consume energy more efficiently. The move is likely to irritate ordinary people who have become used to receiving free gas since 1993.

(News report from Issue No. 168, published on Jan. 22 2014)