MOSCOW, October 16 (RIA Novosti) – The prime minister of Uzbekistan pledged Wednesday that up to 90 percent of cotton will be machine-harvested within the next three years.
The efforts to switch away from manual cotton-picking comes amid ongoing international criticism over working standards for harvesters in the Central Asian nation.
The only plant manufacturing cotton-picking machinery in Uzbekistan, which is one of the world’s top five largest exporters of the commodity, shut down in 2008.
Uzbek Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyayev said the Tashkent Tractor Plant, based in the country’s capital, is set to manufacture a new type of cotton-picker and will roll out 3,000 units in 2014.
“We have manufactured a machine that in terms of cost, maintenance and service will meet the demands of our farmers,” he said.
Mirziyayev predicted between 80 percent and 90 percent of cotton will be machine-picked by 2016.
Uzbekistan has come in for particular criticism for the alleged practice of drafting children and government workers into picking cotton.
The International Labor Rights Forum estimates that as many as two million children are forcibly taken out of school and made to work under appalling conditions.
Mirziyayev issued a decree last year banning children from working in the cotton fields.
Many adults – state employees in particular – are also forced to help bring in the harvest. The ILRF estimates that up to one-third of the country’s population is conscripted each fall to work on cotton farms.
