Hurmatoi spends her days at the medpunkt, a one-story rural health post where she gives injections, checks blood pressure, and visits bedridden patients in their homes. These days, the community nurse is forced to work well away from the some 300 residents in her part of a village in Tajikistan’s northern Sughd region.
Instead of caring for people, she’s out picking cotton.
“Last week, me and several dozen other [public sector] workers spent a week in the cotton fields,” said Hurmatoi, who didn’t want to give her full name for fear of retaliation. “We were told to bring folding beds and slept in a makeshift dorm near the fields. We worked from early morning until sunset, with only a short break for lunch.”
Cotton is a cornerstone of Central Asia’s rural economies. Uzbekistan is among the world’s top 10 producers, harvesting about 1.3 million tons a year, followed by Turkmenistan with around 800,000 tons and Tajikistan with roughly 500,000 tons.
Hurmatoi is one of thousands of health workers, teachers, and other public employees -- as well as students -- to have been mobilized to cotton fields across Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan this fall, leaving schools, hospitals, and government offices understaffed during the harvest season, which runs from late August through November.
Authorities in the region have been accused of using public employees as forced labor under the threat of dismissal from their normal jobs, while students are threatened with disciplinary action or expulsion from school, according to workers and rights groups.
Those who can afford it often bribe officials to get around the difficult manual work or pay someone else to pick cotton instead of them. In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, those who cannot take part, are required to hire a replacement.
Rights groups say that under pressure -- including international sanctions -- the practice has been reduced in recent years, though as the story of Hurmatoi and others show, it continues.
Hurmatoi said the cost of meals -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner -- are deducted from their cotton-picking pay.
“So, in the end, we get a very small amount of money. It’s hard work. At 48, I’m too old for this and I have back pain. But I risk losing my job if I don’t go,” she told RFE/RL.
Pressured To Join 'Voluntary' Campaign
Authorities insist that participating in the cotton harvest is voluntary. But local reports and testimonies collected by RFE/RL suggest otherwise.
In Tajikistan’s southern Khatlon region, education authorities have ordered schools and colleges to send teachers and students to the fields “in their free time.”
Two lecturers from Bokhtar State University in Khatlon told RFE/RL that they were instructed to pick cotton on weekends or risk dismissal.
In Uzbekistan, teachers, nurses, and local officials in several provinces say they were pressured to join “voluntary” cotton-picking drives organized by local authorities.
“All employees of our schools – teachers, guards, and administrative and technical staff – are picking cotton,” a teacher from the Olot district of the southwestern Bukhara region told RFE/RL.
“We were ordered that if someone asks we should say we came of our own free will,” the teacher said on condition of anonymity.
President Shavkat Mirziyoev, who came to power in 2016, pledged to eradicate forced and child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton sector as Uzbek cotton faced a boycott by Western retail groups, such as H&M, Nike, and Walmart over the use of child labor.
In 2023, Mirziyoev told the UN General Assembly that the practice had been “completely eliminated.”
Yet this year, rights groups and local media report a resurgence under new labels such as “voluntary participation.”
On September 26, Mirziyoev declared a 10-day “emergency” campaign to prevent harvest delays. This year, Uzbekistan planted cotton on 875,000 hectares, targeting 3.7 million tons of raw cotton in 2025.
With the spotlight of international scrutiny still shining on it, the government remains sensitive to criticism.
On October 14, the Employment Ministry said more than 70 cases of labor law violations had been identified and stressed that “all forms of forced labor are strictly prohibited.”
Several local officials have been fined for coercing residents into picking cotton. Among them was a deputy district governor in Surkhondaryo Province, who was ordered to pay 2.6 million Uzbek soms ($1,720) in fines for reportedly insulting and threatening neighborhood committee members who failed to send people to pick cotton.
In Turkmenistan, where the government openly supports mass labor mobilization, the campaign is even broader. Along with farmers and civil servants, the authorities have sent soldiers, former convicts, and even alimony defaulters into the fields.
“Unlike previous years, many public employees are now being told to work for free. Officials justify it by saying: ‘You receive your salary from the state,’” a resident of the western province of Balkan told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity.
Pay More Money To Farmers
Analysts say that despite reforms and international pressure, the deep-rooted structure of the cotton economy in Central Asia still depends on coercion.
“The cotton sector in these countries remains unreformed,” said Alisher Ilkhamov, director of the UK-based research group Central Asia Due Diligence. “Mirziyoev’s reforms were political -- they stopped mass mobilization for a while -- but the centralized system hasn’t changed. As long as the government sets production quotas and prices, local authorities will keep forcing people to meet targets.”
A Dushanbe-based economist, who asked not to be named, said the problem lies in the economics of cotton production.
“Sending students and state workers to the fields while pretending it’s voluntary isn’t a solution,” he said. “If the government raised payments for pickers and farmers -- who are underpaid because the state takes most of the profit -- many people would join willingly.”
