Because many working-age adults are abroad, students end up picking cotton, which is still done by hand. Technically volunteers, they can be expelled if they refuse to work. In the end they earn a pittance because they must pay for food and lodgings.

Dushanbe (AsiaNews/Agencies) – In the fall in Khatlon Province and Tajikistan’s other agricultural areas, college students leave the classroom for the cotton fields. Teachers become monitors and lead the harvest which is done by hand for nine or ten hours a day, seven days a week under the autumn sun, which in Tajikistan can still burn.

There are few harvesting machines. Many working-age men have emigrated abroad for long stretches of time so that the task falls on students, like in Soviet times, bussed in, often from far away.

Technically, the students are in the fields by choice. But volunteerism seems to be loosely interpreted when it comes to the cotton harvest. Bobo Shamsov, a dean at the Kulob Nursing College, explains: “Sometimes, some [students] refuse to go to the cotton fields. In this case, we call the parents and give them a first warning. If they still refuse to go, they loose their grants. And if that is not enough, they are expelled from the college.”

This year students overall from the southern city of Kulob are spending the fall in the fields. At the Nursing College, only fourth-year students are exempt from harvesting. On Sundays, students from area elementary schools even pitch in.

The so-called volunteers have quotas to meet, at least 50 kilograms per day.

In 2006, the government reported the cotton harvest to be just over 440,000 tonnes. This year, Tajik officials have set a harvest target of 550,000 tonnes before the autumn rains set in.

There is no contract signed with the students themselves. There is just an agreement between the university and the farmers who need students to pick the cotton.

Officially, a student is paid 15 dirams (4 US cents) per kilo of picked cotton, a fairly decent rate in a country where a typical rural resident earns roughly US$ 20 per month. But many students report that they don’t have much left to show for their work in the fields after expenses for food—usually bread and vegetable soup—and other items are deducted from their harvest tally. Food prices have in fact gone up as a result of rising wheat prices

One student who last year picked about 30 to 40 kilograms a day made only 30 somonis (US$ 8.72) for the whole season.

Some students were told that those who picked 100 kilograms of cotton or more per day would receive better grades, but most of the girls can’t get close to 50 kilograms.

“Because of that, every evening, after weighing, they put us in a line and reprimand the ones who worked badly,” said one student.

• tajikistan
• khalton
• kulob
• cotton
• harvest
• students
• exploitation