Shake Down, Shake Up
Just a quick one today folks. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure to take a look at the post on May 11 ‘A Autocratic Dawn’, I think it raises an important issue that will and has affected CA and the world.
EurasiaNet has written a scathing report chronicling the Tajikistan government’s voluntary tax request from some of its poorest citizens in order to raise $10 million dollars to finance the Rogun project. The news outlet calls the tax ‘arbitrary’ and ‘confiscatory’ and rightly claims that it will dramatically hurt the poorest of the nation for amounts to a very small percentage of the projects ultimate budget, around $550 million. The people of Tajik deserve better and if this money is raised, the government needs to be transparent of its use, otherwise it will disillusion its populace to an even greater degree.
Kyrgyzistan’s President Bakiyev has provided a one-time compensation payment of $14,600 to 72 children and their families, who were accidentally infected with the AIDS virus in two southern Kyrg hospitals, because of what has been asserted as medical personnel negligence. This is a tragic way for progress to be spurred, but hopefully this is a sign that the Kyrg government is going to start taking HIV/AIDS prevention more seriously.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
[…] Patrick Frost tells that the Tajikistan government tries to impose a voluntary tax on its citizens to raise $10 million dollars to finance the Rogun project, while the Kyrgyz government has given a compensation payment to 72 children, who were accidentally infected with the AIDS in hospitals. Posted by Adil Nurmakov Share This […]