SEPT. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Armenia detained 50 people during a protest against electricity price rises for businesses. The government backed down after a series of protests in July and said it would subsidise a 17% price rise for residential property but that businesses would have to pay it.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Almaty and the oil-rich region of Mangistau in the west of the country are the only regions in Kazakhstan receiving a significant inflow of people looking for work, data published on the ranking.kz website reported. The data also showed that most of the people moving to these areas settled in villages rather than cities.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Uzbek government said it would increase all utility prices from Oct 1, a decision prompted by the regional economic malaise.
The state water supply company said drinking water rates would increase by 8% and hot water by 5% in Tashkent; electricity prices will increase by 8%; gas prices by 7.3%.
The announcements will pile extra pressure onto ordinary people who are already dealing with price inflation for food and petrol as well as a drop in their own spending power because of a major fall in remittances.
Data from the Russian Central Bank showed that cash sent back by Uzbek workers had halved in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2014.
Inflation has been creeping up across Uzbekistan. Earlier this month, the government said that it was going to increase public sector salaries by 10%.
Unofficial reports from Uzbekistan have said that this injection of cash into the economy has also inflated food prices by 30%.
Higher tariffs will pose especially serious challenges to the Uzbek population given the approaching winter coupled with plummeting money remittances from abroad, the increasing staples and services prices as well as anticipated shortages of fuel, gas and electricity.
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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A bomb exploded near a mosque in central Tashkent. Nobody was hurt in the explosion. Police said they are looking for two people who left the bomb in a bag at a bus stop.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Aisultan Nazarbayev, grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, has said he wants to be head of Kazakhstan’s football association. Mr Nazarbayev is already head of the club that owns FC Astana which has qualified for the UEFA Champions League.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Members of Turkmenistan’s Council of Elders, an advisory body chaired by President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, have urged the government to charge people for using gas and water, media reported.
Free gas and water for people has been a cornerstone of society in Turkmenistan. Charging for it would be a major policy switch and may indicate that the economic turmoil that has has hit the region in the past year has had a heavy impact on Turkmenistan.
“Our people have, for many years, enjoyed unprecedented and unparalleled benefits, such as free water and gas. Given that today the standard of living has increased significantly, I believe it is time to abolish these benefits and introduce a fee,” official media quoted Gozel
Saparmyradova, a physics teacher and a member of the council, as saying.
She was backed up by Khudainazar Atageldiyev, described as a caterer.
“The new amendments to the Constitution will contribute to the development of the non-public sector of the economy,” he said.
Mr Berdymukhamedov was present at the meeting and had earlier delivered a speech in which he had showcased entrepreneurship in Turkmenistan. He didn’t mention the perilous state of the country’s economics nor charging for utilities.
But Mr Berdymukhamedov has previously used the Council of Elders to leak out policy changes and he may be considering charging for gas and water.
What impact this has on the population remains to be seen.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SHARABASH/Azerbaijan, SEPT. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — In northwest Azerbaijan, rain coated the mountain-ringed village of Sarabash with a glossy sheen. Walnut trees glistened and the smell of grass lifted up from the wet fields. It was 8am on a weekday morning but there were no signs of commerce or industry. Just silence.
Remote and cut-off, Sarabash was not connected to the rest of Azerbaijan by road until the 1970s. Today, the track is rock-strewn and rough and the villagers feel, once again, as though they have been forgotten.
The Soviet-era collective farming system, and their livelihoods, have collapsed. Baku and its environs may glow from a beautifying oil boom that has made Azerbaijan rich over the past decade but rural areas have been left behind. Sarabash feels forgotten.
Before the fall of the Soviet Union, collective farms did well up here. In the 1960s there were 40,000 cows and dozens of farming families.
The pair of crumbling statues that stand in the fields are testament to this. They represent the two shepherds who played a part in the village being given a Communist award in 1964. Since independence the villagers admit they have fallen on hard times. Only 40 people – and one shepherd – remain.
When the school principal, Migdav Sofiev, grimaced he revealed his full set of gold teeth. He shook his head and described the desolate state of the village.
“There are only seven children at the village school and when they leave, it will close,” he said.
By comparison the town of Qax lies just 45-minutes away from Sarabash. Throughout the summer there holidaymakers eat in garishly decorated restaurants while their children play in bowling alleys and on bouncy castles.
Over a glass of ayran, a thin, sour yogurt drink; some mountain honey; a disc of tandoor-baked bread, villagers said that despite the untouched mountain scenery it is extremely rare for foreigners to visit. Tourists are keener on the amenities in Qax and they don’t bother to come either.
A sense of resigned despair lingered over the breakfast table.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Around 15,000 ethnic Armenians have fled their homes in Syria and resettled in Armenia, the BBC quoted the UN as saying. More than 100,000 Armenians had lived in Syria, mainly around Aleppo before a civil war broke out in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
AUG. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – A significant increase in the cost of potatoes is upsetting locals in Yerevan, the Armenianow website reported. It said the price of potatoes had doubled over the past month. The government, though, has said the increase in prices is purely seasonal and will drop back down.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)
AUG. 31 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Up to 10 animal rights activists brawled with security guards at a dolphin aquarium in Batumi on Georgia’s Black Sea coast, media reported. The activists were staging a protest and had demanded that the dolphins be released into the Black Sea. Media reported that the police arrested and charged at least six men for breaking into the aquarium.
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(News report from Issue No. 246, published on Sept. 4 2015)