Students play basketball outside a school in Barskoon, eastern Kyrgyzstan, in February 2013. Average teacher wages of less than 100 dollars is driving many teachers to quit the profession and instead take on better paying unskilled work. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By an EurasiaNet correspondent
BISHKEK, Nov 3 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Minovar Ruzieva, 38, was an English teacher in Osh until last summer. The mother of four now sells Chinese clothes at a local bazaar. Like many other teachers in Kyrgyzstan, she could not survive on her “scant salary,” so she took unskilled work to make ends meet.

“I quit working as a teacher because I was paid only 3,800 soms [68 dollars] per month,” Ruzieva told EurasiaNet.org, pointing out that a kilo of beef would cost 10 percent of her salary. “That salary is enough to buy one nice dress. I managed to tolerate such miserable pay thanks to my husband’s earnings, which support our family. But I am sure a single mother with a child or two would not be able to survive on such a salary.”If in the Soviet heyday schools had their pick among highly qualified teachers, “now we are forced to take anyone who comes, anyone available, regardless of their skills.” -- Oksana Kiseleva

Dismal pay, combined with low social status, is driving younger teachers to leave the profession. In addition, some older teachers who were trained during the Soviet era are retiring, and they are not being replaced. As they go, the quality of public education is plunging, especially outside of Bishkek, leaving a generation of Kyrgyz graduates lacking the skills needed to find well-paying jobs.

“We have 20-to-25-year-olds who cannot even correctly write their names!” said Gaisha Ibragimova, president of the Association of Educational Institutions in Kyrgyzstan, a Bishkek-based lobby group.

Lawmaker Kanybek Osmonaliev, chairman of parliament’s Education, Science, Culture and Sports Committee, says there are about 80,000 schoolteachers in the country, a shortage of at least 2,500.

“The main reason for the shortage of teachers is the low salaries,” Osmonaliev, a former physics teacher, told EurasiaNet.org. “Nowadays teachers get on average 5,500 soms [99 dollars] per month. We need to raise their salaries by at least 30 percent.”

That would cost the state budget 3.5 billion soms, approximately 63 million dollars, Osmonaliev calculates, noting that the impoverished government cannot afford the increase.

On Oct. 15, at a parliamentary hearing where lawmakers discussed teachers’ salaries, they failed to take action. After a heated debate, including threats to dismiss the entire Education Ministry staff, Erkin Sakebayev from the president’s governing Social Democratic Party concluded “there is no need to take a decision because the government will not fulfill it due to the lack of funds.”

Oksana Kiseleva, an administrator at the Olympus School, a public school in Osh, said the shortage of teachers is a “very serious problem.” If in the Soviet heyday schools had their pick among highly qualified teachers, “now we are forced to take anyone who comes, anyone available, regardless of their skills.”

Because of the low salaries, schools across the country lack teachers of geography, mathematics, biology and the Russian language, Kiseleva told EurasiaNet.org.

“Today many teachers work at local bazaars, and basically it is only pensioners who work at schools. A very large percentage of retired teachers still teach,” Kiseleva said. “First of all, they work because their pensions are small, but also because school administrators manage to persuade [teachers to postpone retirement] because we do not have enough.”

The teacher shortage is just one of the causes of the collapse of Kyrgyzstan’s education system. Schools are also crowded and poorly maintained. “Most children do not have textbooks,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) wrote in 2011. The curriculum is “outdated and overloaded […] irrelevant and incoherent.”

Corruption is also a problem, and not just with teachers frequently demanding informal payments from parents or requiring high school students to pay for good grades. Under the former president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a state tender for printing textbooks was handed to a company with ties to his son, Maxim, according to the ICG report. The price of textbooks rose, money disappeared, and when the ruling Bakiyev family was chased from the country in 2010, few of the textbooks had reached classrooms.

Local politicians look to foreign donors to fix the problems and are reluctant to accept responsibility, or even acknowledge shortcomings in the system. In 2005 and 2009, Kyrgyzstan scored last in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment exam, or PISA; over 80 percent of Kyrgyz 15-year-olds did not meet minimum expectations in literacy, mathematics and science. Rather than strive to make improvements, Kyrgyzstan simply stopped offering the exam.

But for many, the teacher shortage is the most visible problem.

A spokesman at the Ministry of Education and Science, Amantur Akmatov, maintained the ministry is succeeding in filling the teacher shortage, cutting it in half overall the last year, bringing the deficit to 1,200 teachers. But he deferred questions about how the salary gap was funded to the Finance Ministry.

Experts do not trust the Education Ministry’s numbers. Ibragimova, the educational association chief, asserted that Kyrgyzstan lacks 3,000 teachers, especially in science and the Russian language, which is critical since so many Kyrgyzstanis join the migrant exodus to Russia in search of work.

These days people “believe that only the biggest losers, people unable to do anything else with their lives, become teachers, and they think it is a shameful and disgraceful profession,” Ibragimova said.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Central Asian migrants, including many from Tajikistan, gather in Moscow to pray during the Islamic holy day of Eid al-Fitr, in early August 2013. Estimates vary, but almost half of Tajikistan’s male workforce is thought to be working abroad, mostly in Russia. Credit: David Trilling/EurasiaNet

By an EurasiaNet correspondent
DUSHANBE, Apr 11 2014 (EurasiaNet)

Labour migrants make up Tajikistan’s economic lifeline, but that’s a fact the Central Asian country’s leadership doesn’t seem eager to acknowledge.

Migrants contribute the equivalent of 48 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP, according to the World Bank, making the impoverished country the most remittance-dependent in the world. Estimates vary, but almost half of Tajikistan’s male workforce is thought to be working abroad, mostly in Russia.“Why don’t we replace the billboards featuring photos of the president with pictures of the people who feed us every day?” -- Olga Tutubalina

The migrant-labour role in the economy is having trouble fitting in with the image of Tajikistan that President Imomali Rakhmon’s administration wants to project to the outside world. Rakhmon has spent huge sums on mega-projects in the capital Dushanbe partly in an effort to distance the country from its reputation as Central Asia’s poorest state.

The government also doesn’t look kindly upon those who would like to honor labour migrants. The most recent such initiative began in February, when Tajik blogger and journalist Isfandiyor Zarafshoni started a petition calling for the construction of a monument to migrant workers.

“Every city in Tajikistan has a monument to Ismoil Somoni, founder of the Tajik state. Many cities and regional centers still have monuments of Vladimir Lenin. Some cities and regions have monuments of [medieval poets] Rudaki and Ferdowsi. But why don’t we have the most necessary and most important monument, to the Labour Migrant?” Zarafshoni told EurasiaNet.org.

“They leave behind their families and children, parents and dreams. With their hard work, they build the Tajikistan in which we live today. They are often treated badly, insulted and humiliated, go unpaid, are beaten and even killed,” Zarafshoni continued.

In 2013, 942 Tajik guest workers returned to Tajikistan from Russia in coffins.

The government has not formally commented on the latest initiative, but officials tell EurasiaNet.org the idea is a non-starter. “I don’t see a need for a monument,” said Suhrob Sharipov, an MP for Rakhmon’s People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan.

This isn’t the first time recently that the Tajik government has appeared uneasy acknowledging the country’s economic reliance on migrants. Last July, the National Bank stopped publishing remittance data, arguing it could be “politicized.” The change has done little to hide the information, as data is still available from transfer points in Russia.

Critics say the government is trying to bury its head in the sand. On April 1, the Asian Development Bank said Tajikistan’s robust 7.4 percent growth in 2013 was “supported mainly by remittances,” and warned the economy is slowing as the government does too little to attract private investment.

The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly said Tajikistan’s dependence on migrant transfers leaves it vulnerable to external shocks and has encouraged the government to focus on local job creation.

In 2011, Olga Tutubalina, editor of Dushanbe’s Asia Plus newspaper, also proposed a monument to migrants. Back then she wrote an open letter to the government, noting that Tajikistan’s population survives because of the labour migrants working in Russia and Kazakhstan.

“Why don’t we replace the billboards featuring photos of the president with pictures of the people who feed us every day?” Tutubalina told EurasiaNet.org.

A spokesman for Rakhmon’s party says monuments are installed for heroes. Migrants, he argues, go abroad to enhance their personal lives. Therefore, they’re not heroes.

“There are 200 million migrants worldwide, but none of their countries have installed a monument to them,” People’s Democratic Party spokesman Usmon Solih told EurasiaNet.org.

His claim is not exactly accurate: Mexico, for example, boasts monuments to its citizens who have gone to the United States to better their lives and the lives of their families back home. Meanwhile, Istanbul has a monument to the unnamed and overlooked porter, outside the famous Grand Bazaar.

Building a monument would “acknowledge that labour migrants play an important role in the internal politics of Tajikistan,” said Shokirdjon Hakimov, deputy chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party.

Authorities will not permit a monument because their own “ineffective economic policy” has forced migrants to leave the country, which is embarrassing. The National Bank’s decision to stop publishing remittance data was “a political decision,” added Hakimov.

Sharipov, the MP close to Rakhmon, insists the government is not embarrassed. He dismissed the idea the country is financially dependent on migrants and rejected accusations the National Bank’s decision to withhold data was political.

But outside of those in government, few in Dushanbe’s chattering classes seem to buy official explanations. Any acknowledgement of labour migrants’ significance, said political scientist Saimiddin Dustov, “would mean admitting the impotence and the irrelevance of the government’s economic programmes.”

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

(EurasiaNet) – Public anger is building in Azerbaijan over Russia’s rough treatment of an ethnic Azeri accused of murder. The incident likely will scuttle any chance, however remote, that Baku will join the Moscow-led Customs Union.

On Oct. 16, a 31-year-old Azerbaijani citizen, Orhan Zeynalov, was arrested in Moscow for the murder of Russian Egor Sherbakov after an alleged street altercation in the Russian capital’s Biryulevo District. Russian TV channels broadcast reports showing masked police officers beating and humiliating Zeynalov before dragging him, for unknown reasons, into the office of Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokotsev.

Anti-migrant protests followed the Oct. 10 murder, with a mob looting a mall in Moscow and a vegetable warehouse allegedly owned by ethnic Azeris and a place of employment for many labor-migrants. (According to some estimates, one million Azerbaijani migrants are now in Russia; firm numbers do not exist.)

As sensationalist coverage from Russian media outlets gained steam, and “hundreds” of arrests and deportations of Azerbaijani labour migrants began, anger in Azerbaijan reached a quick boil. Even MPs from the ruling Yeni Azerbaijan Party, usually not ones to criticise Russia, denounced Moscow’s “medieval methods.”

On social networks and in traditional media, some Azerbaijanis argue that, given what is perceived as an unwarranted insult to Azerbaijan’s dignity, the country now has no option but to ally itself more strongly with the West, if “we want ever to become a civilised nation,” as one commentator stated.

While steering clear of such declarations, Ali Hasanov, a longtime senior presidential political advisor who is often seen as the administration’s mood-ring, signaled that the government isn’t going to look the other way. Terming the Russian police’s behaviour “inadequate” and charging that Russian media is “provoking hatred,” he warned on Oct. 17 that “these actions could have a boomerang effect and create negative conditions for Russian society,” the Turan news agency reported.

The upshot of this anger, whether coming from the Azerbaijani government or public, could have one direct consequence, analysts say – ending any chance for Baku to look favourably on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to unite former Soviet republics into a so-called Eurasian Union. The initiative is widely seen as a Kremlin-branded alternative to the European Union.

“Russia itself created a serious obstacle for” Azerbaijan ever considering membership in the Customs Union, the Eurasian Union’s forerunner, said Baku-based political analyst Vafa Guluzade, a former senior diplomat and presidential foreign-policy advisor. “Indeed, I think that Baku could use the hysteria over the Orhan Zeynalov case as a pretext not to enter the Customs Union,” said Guluzade, who himself favours closer ties with the European Union.

While Azerbaijan has never indicated publicly that it is considering joining the Russia-led Customs Union, some observers believe that Moscow will start a membership-rush on Baku in the run-up to the European Union’s summit next month in Vilnius, where three former Soviet republics (Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) are expected to formalise closer ties with the EU.

In September, Azerbaijan’s western neighbour Armenia announced, after much Russian coercing, that it would join the Customs Union. The decision came despite earlier talks with the EU about an Association Agreement.

Energy-rich Azerbaijan does not have the same economic concerns as does Armenia. Nonetheless, some Azerbaijani media outlets believe that pressure is being brought to bear – including by influential presidential administration chief, Ramiz Mehdiyev. The campaign, the story goes, included stirring up tensions with the United States after Azerbaijan’s Oct. 9 presidential elections. The government has not commented on these allegations.

Azerbaijan so far has no plans to move toward an Association Agreement with the EU. In Oct. 21 comments to journalists, Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said that Baku would prefer “individual relations with the EU” rather than a relationship “based on some regional approach.” Whether or not President Ilham Aliyev will participate in the Vilnius summit is not known, he added.

(EurasiaNet) – Giving in to sustained international pressure, authoritarian Uzbekistan is opening up its cotton fields to international monitors this fall. The International Labour Organisation has confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that it is sending a mission to monitor the Uzbek cotton harvest, which starts in mid-September.

“The ILO will be involved in the monitoring of the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan with the aim of preventing the use of child labour,” spokesman Hans von Rohland confirmed by email on Sep. 12. Monitoring will start “in the next few days”.

Uzbekistan has been the target in recent years of international criticism and a widespread commercial boycott over its reliance on child and forced labour to reap the cash crop. Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department assailed Uzbekistan on the forced labour issue.

The surprise news that an observer mission is being allowed into Uzbekistan – which has always denied the use of systematic state-sponsored child and forced labour, but resisted years of pressure to invite monitors in – has received a cautious welcome from watchdog groups. Nevertheless, labour rights advocates are concerned that the ILO’s mandate will not go far enough to stamp out abuses in the cotton fields.

“We are pleased that this year the International Labour Organization expects to deploy teams to Uzbekistan to monitor during the harvest,” the Cotton Campaign, a coalition lobbying for improved standards in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, said on Sep. 9.

“We remain concerned that the ILO monitors will be accompanied by representatives of the Government of Uzbekistan and the official state union and employers’ organizations, whose presence will have a chilling effect on Uzbek citizens’ willingness to speak openly with the ILO monitors,” the Cotton Campaign statement added.

Von Rohland, the ILO spokesman, confirmed that the mission “involves cooperation with the Uzbek authorities who have the mandate to deal with child labour issues, as well as with experts from employers’ organisations and trade unions.”

Uzbek participants will receive ILO training aimed at “ensuring that the monitoring is credible and reliable,” the representative added. One goal “is increasing awareness and building up the capacity of national actors to ensure the full respect of the provisions of ratified Conventions.”

Uzbekistan has ratified two ILO conventions on child labour, but human rights activists say Tashkent routinely flouts them. Campaigners are concerned that the observers will not gain unfettered access to the cotton fields. “It is essential that monitoring teams be comprised only of independent observers and not include any Uzbek officials,” Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch, told EurasiaNet.org.

Access without minders is essential to allow labourers to speak freely, he said, since “the Uzbek government has a well-documented record of suppressing all forms of dissent.” Activists are also concerned that the ILO’s remit covers child labour, but not forced labour, although Uzbekistan has signed ILO forced labour conventions which would provide a legal basis to monitor it.

“The mission’s mandate should explicitly include forced labour as the entire system of the cotton harvest as it affects millions of Uzbeks rests on a state-sponsored system of coercion,” Swerdlow said. The ILO representative countered that “the monitoring will look at child labour, including forced child labour, and important aspects of forced labour are bound to come up.” The Cotton Campaign has already documented cases of forced labour during harvest preparations.

“During the spring 2013, Government authorities mobilized children and adults to plough and weed, and authorities beat farmers for planting onions instead of cotton,” it reported. In summer it documented “preparations to coercively mobilize nurses, teachers and other public sector workers to harvest cotton.”

Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest rests on forced labour to help farmers meet government-set quotas to pick the crop. Forced labourers can buy their way out: The going rate this year is 400,000 sums (200 dollars at the official exchange rate, or five times the minimum wage), according to the Uzmetronom.com website. Cotton pickers are paid a pittance: the rate was 150-200 sums (7-10 cents) per kilo last year, Uzmetronom said.

(EurasiaNet) – In Azerbaijan, opposition journalists have long been beaten, blackmailed and some even killed. But now, it appears a few are being bought. When it comes to media freedom, President Ilham Aliyev’s administration has a dismal record. In recent years, the government has tended to resort to the stick to go after journalists who expose official misdeeds, or otherwise vex people in high places.

With a presidential election fast approaching in early October, however, authorities have evidently opted to offer a few carrots in the hopes of quelling critical news coverage In late July, the government opened an apartment building with 155 one-, two- and three-bedroom units to be occupied exclusively by working journalists and their families. The 17-story structure, built at a cost of five million manats (6.37 million dollars), is located in the Baku suburb of Bibi Heybat.

Many of the takers are affiliated with pro-government media outlets and information entities. But a few new tenants work for opposition-oriented and independently owned outlets. President Aliyev clearly hopes the apartment building’s opening will help soften his administration’s troubled democratisation image. The fact that “journalists of various media outlets and people with different political views have received apartments … shows the absence of any political discrimination in Azerbaijan,” Aliyev claimed.

Some journalists contend that the offer of free housing is a thinly disguised government bribe, designed to influence media coverage. “Authorities have finally turned the fundamental right to freedom of speech into the right for freedom from paying rent for an apartment,” quipped former newspaper editor Shahveled Chobanoglu in a Contact.az op-ed.

Two employees of the government’s most outspoken media critic, the newspaper Azadliq (Freedom), a periodical associated with the opposition Popular Front Party of the Azerbaijani Republic, applied for and were given free apartments in the Bibi Heybat building. Several employees from other opposition newspapers, Yeni Musavat (linked to the Musavat Party) and Bizim Yol (Our Way), are also tenants.

Azadliq Editor-in-Chief Rahim Hajiyev told EurasiaNet.org that, despite his strong objections to the project, he did not refuse when two employees “really in need” informed him that they wanted to apply for the flats. “They asked me and I just could not say no because the newspaper cannot fulfill their financial needs,” Hajiyev said. He underlined though, that he is not comfortable with their decision.

“I agree, it is a vicious practice to take grants and apartments from the government. I cannot say we are right,” he said. The paper also receives revenue from the government’s Media Support Fund. “We are working in very tough conditions, deprived of any foreign donor support and advertising revenues and have to survive,” Hajiyev added.

Both Hajiyev and the opposition journalists who live in the building insisted that the acceptance of a government-funded apartment will not influence the way either the journalists in question, or the outlets they work for, carry out their watchdog functions.

The Turan news agency was the only privately owned, pro-opposition outlet that refused – despite several supposed invitations from the government – to seek any apartments for its employees. One Turan reporter, Huquq Salmanov, suggested that the government seemed more interested in trying to compromise the journalistic integrity of opposition media outlets, than in helping any specific journalist in need.

When Salmanov, whose family faces acute economic hardship, applied for an apartment as an individual, officials told him he could “only get an apartment as a Turan correspondent”. “They wanted to have Turan in the list of recipients,” Salmanov claimed. “I did not want to play these games, and refused.” Media Support Fund Director Vugar Aliyev was not available for comment to EurasiaNet.org.

Salmanov is far from the only journalist struggling to make ends meet in Azerbaijan. On average, monthly salaries for broadcast, online or print journalists amount to just 450 manats (574 dollars), while the typical rent for a flat in central Baku can easily be double that, if not more. The comparatively high cost of living in Baku is what drove most, if not all the opposition journalists to apply for a place in the Bibi Heybat building.

“It is not possible to have a decent life with our salaries when you need to rent a place to live,” said one of the opposition journalists/ Bibi Heybat residents, a married father of two children. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The opposition journalist saw no conflict of interest in his actions. “The building was not built with Ilham Aliyev’s personal money,” he reasoned. “I received the apartment from the state and, therefore, do not feel under an obligation” to the Aliyev administration. In general, the scramble for apartments seemed to highlight a shortcoming in Azerbaijani journalists’ understanding of what constitutes a conflict of interest.

Another opposition journalist, Aygun Muradkhanly, a Yeni-Musavat correspondent, believes the government has an obligation to financially assist journalists. When Muradkhanly’s name was removed from the list of apartment recipients a few days before the building’s opening, she appealed to President Aliyev.

(EurasiaNet) – Almost five years ago, as his village in northern Kyrgyzstan endured daily power outages, rays of light always emitted from Sabyr Kurmanov’s garage. They came from his egg incubator, a 12-volt contraption powered by something he and his neighbours have in abundance – wind.

Kurmanov is no environmentalist. But he knew that he could not rely on the ailing national energy grid for a steady supply of power. “Hatching eggs requires stable light and temperature,” he says. Kurmanov fashioned the turbine himself; parts for the 60-egg incubator setup cost less than 300 dollars. “Mine was the only business in Kochkor working around the clock,” he jokes.

These days, Kurmanov, a small-time businessman and former engineer, has inspired his neighbours. Each summer, he helps them use solar-powered pumps to get clean water out of the ground. Not far from Kochkor lies an alpine lake, Song-Kul, where shepherds live with their families for a few months a year. Now visitors can enjoy the disorienting experience of waking up in an isolated yurt hearing a shepherd’s favourite brand of techno – the beat powered by the sun.

But while public interest in alternative energy has increased – mainly spurred by an ongoing energy crisis – heavily subsidised domestic electricity, when it works, provides a disincentive for local businesses to invest in off-the-grid options.

Rates in Kyrgyzstan are the cheapest in Central Asia. And mindful of the fate of ex-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was chased from power shortly after imposing a steep utility rate hike in 2010, today’s leaders in Bishkek are wary of raising tariffs, despite the World Bank’s prediction of a protracted supply deficit beginning this winter.

Igor Kuon worked for 14 years in the state hydroelectric sector and now leads Inkraft, a company supplying small-capacity hydropower-units and solar panels. He has been well placed to observe the “deterioration of national energy”. When his company started working on renewables in 2003, there wasn’t much demand for their services, he told EurasiaNet.org.

“Energy was plentiful and it was cheap. The [national] grid wasn’t well managed but it had retained some of its former capacity. The equipment was in better condition. Some specialists had left [Kyrgyzstan], but not all,” Kuon explained.

Since then, however, rapid degradation of physical infrastructure and mismanagement has taken a toll. “By the time Bakiyev came to power [2005] much of the infrastructure was ruined. … A few people began to realise cheap energy is only useful if it exists,” said Kuon.

Industry experts argue that Kyrgyzstan would be ripe for a renewables drive, if only investment was forthcoming. The country enjoys an average of 270 days of sun per year and only Tajikistan and Russia have more significant hydropower potential among former Soviet countries, says Edil Bogombayev, who coordinates a U.N. project that helps build small hydropower stations (between five- and 300-kilowatts) for rural households and communities living close to rivers.

According to Bogombayev, a five-kilowatt hydropower unit can power a small farm, but with construction and installation costing several thousand dollars, such initiatives are mostly donor-funded. Off-grid energy amounts to less than one percent of the total produced and consumed in Kyrgyzstan, he says.

Small, privately financed initiatives such as Kurmanov’s wind-powered incubator and larger commercial operations such as a 500-kilowatt hydro-powered dairy factory based in the western town of Belovodsk remain the exception rather than the rule.

Although unrelenting budget woes mean the government is short on cash for alternative energy, there is hope that amendments to the Law on Renewable Energies last August will stimulate private-sector investment in low-capacity hydropower stations. Mirroring a global trend, the amendments increased the fee energy producers can make by selling excess power to the national grid, a move that could help relieve stress on the system. Regulators are still working out the details.

Bogombayev sees foreign investment in renewables as integral to taming Kyrgyzstan’s energy risk and notes the interest of Toulouse-based MECAMIDI in constructing and renovating mini-hydro stations in the north of the country. He acknowledges, though, that instability in Bishkek remains a deterrent: “investors will react according to the political situation.”

Nevertheless, despite falling prices over the last few years, fully green commercial operations are currently “not realistic”, a hotelier in Cholpon-Ata, a town on the shore of Kyrgyzstan’s main tourist attraction, Lake Issyk-Kul, told EurasiaNet.org. The hotelier, who insisted on anonymity for fear of hurting revenues, estimates her 15-room facility generates under 6,000 dollars a year in utility bills.

“I have six Chinese solar-paneled water heaters that cost 500 dollars each and heat 150 litres of water each. But solar infrastructure to power the whole hotel would cost 25,000 dollars. It would take nearly five years to earn back.”

In 2010, Kyrgyzstan tried to promote good governance and reduce corruption by attaching public watchdogs to major ministries and state agencies. Almost three years later, the watchdogs are still functioning, but many express frustration about bureaucratic resistance that hinders their ability to do their jobs.

Observers lauded the September 2010 decree forming Public Advisory Councils (PACs) as a means of giving democratisation a boost in Kyrgyzstan, where a violent uprising in April of that same year ousted an authoritarian-minded president and initiated an experiment in a parliamentary system of government.

Earlier this year, parliament passed a law cementing the PACs’ status. The legislation is now awaiting President Almazbek Atambayev’s signature. But members of the voluntary, unpaid collectives complain that their perennial struggle for acceptance among government officials – regularly rated by transparency indices as among the most corrupt in the world – has kept them from fulfilling their mandate.

Because the councils are free to devise their own work plans – a coordinating body exists but does not control their work – some have yielded better results than others. The PAC overseeing the State Penitentiary Service (GSIN), for example, successfully campaigned for separate cells for female prisoners who were either pregnant or had just given birth. Elsewhere, the Finance Ministry PAC has been instrumental in creating okmot.kg, an online portal where citizens can find information about state tenders and the budget.

“I think we have made steps in terms of transparency,” said Azamat Akeleev, chair of the Finance Ministry PAC. “But there are things that are harder to influence – internal processes, staffing, distribution of the budget, budget policy.”

A number of the watchdogs complain their hands are tied. Jomart Jumabekov, a member of the Ministry of Agriculture’s PAC and the head of a non-profit farming consultancy, echoes a common complaint about access: “The minister thinks he is a god, and has no interest in our council. The [ministry’s] secretary always falls ill whenever we have our meetings. They ignore us,” Jumabekov told EurasiaNet.org.

Galina Davletbaeva, who sits on the PAC of the State Fund for Material Reserves, endured a similar experience before appealing to former president Roza Otunbayeva, who oversaw the creation of the PACs in 2010.

“To begin with, they told us all their documents were secret… I told Roza: ‘Our PAC has nothing to report. We have just been warring [with the State Fund] for the last year-and-a-half.’” After the public dressing down, the leadership of the Fund, which controls Kyrgyzstan’s reserves of foodstuffs and other staples, “began to behave totally differently,” and even provided the council with a room in their building, Davletbaeva said.

Exacerbating their challenges, the watchdogs have not always found easy allies among lawmakers. Although parliament passed a law confirming their status on June 20, several lawmakers spoke out against PACs at a session the day before.

“We don’t need these PACs, because we, the MPs, should be overseeing the work of the ministries,” thundered nationalist lawmaker Jyldyz Joldosheva in comments picked up by the Vechernii Bishkek newspaper.

MP Ismail Isakov, a lieutenant general, said the PACs had “turned the government into a kindergarten” and was especially critical of PACs working on the security structures. He contended that PACs potentially can muddle the chain of command.

Ochir Damchaa chuckles as he drives his second-hand Toyota sedan through the alleyways of Nalaikh, a ramshackle town 35 kilometres east of Ulaanbaatar: “There’re just two kinds of jobs here: drive a taxi, or dig coal.”

Nalaikh was once a major Soviet-era industrial hub, and the site of Mongolia’s first mine. Today, though, the town is littered with ruins of former factories, such as Mongolia’s only glassworks. Residents continue to work as freelance miners on the grounds of the former state-owned coalmine. But jobs are scarce in Nalaikh, as in every other small town across Mongolia.

Despite rapid, mining-driven economic growth, Mongolia is experiencing persistent unemployment, a widening income gap, and a 30 percent poverty rate. The country’s leaders are now promising to diversify the economy, aiming to create jobs that push more people above the poverty line.

Mongolia’s massive Oyu Tolgoi gold and copper mine started shipping copper concentrate to China in early July. By 2020, the joint-venture between Canada’s Rio Tinto, Anglo-Australian firm Turquoise Hill and the Mongolian government is projected to account for about 35 percent to GDP, according to Oyu Tolgoi’s website.

Mongolia at present appears to be at high risk of suffering from so-called Dutch Disease, an economic condition in which a nation’s economy becomes overly dependent on the export of natural resources. Mining currently contributes about a third of GDP and accounts for 89.2 percent of the country’s total exports, according to data compiled by Oxford Business Group.

But the sector employs only about four percent of the entire workforce. Inversely, the traditional agricultural sector – livestock for meat and wool – employs about 40 percent of the workforce and contributes less than 15 percent of GDP, according to the same data.

The transition from a largely agricultural economy to one dominated by mining has contributed to disproportionate growth and exacerbated a problem in Mongolia, dubbed the “missing middle”, says Saurabh Sinha, senior economist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Ulaanbaatar.

“On the one hand you have the mining sector which is running away and driving the entire economy and on the other hand you have the agriculture, the livestock and nomadic lifestyle. And between these two, the urban manufacturing sector is really scant and limited,” Sinha says. This wasn’t always so. Mongolia’s manufacturing sector comprised about a third of the economy in 1988, just before the collapse of communism. In 2011, the figure was seven percent, according to Oxford Business Group.

The decline, Sinha points out, is partly due to the collapse of many state-owned factories following the transition to a market-oriented system. He believes options for reviving manufacturing in the country are limited given the small population and poor infrastructure.

President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, re-elected for a second term in early July, has promised to promote economic diversification policies, but years of talk about the development of non-mining sectors have produced little, says Sukhgerel Dugersuren of OT Watch, a non-profit that monitors the impact of Oyu Tolgoi.

“Ten years ago Mongolia started talking about economic diversification: improving its competiveness, developing the IT sector, developing eco-tourism,” she said. But she believes the attention on mining has adversely affected growth in other sectors over that period.

“Economic diversification simply means not putting all your eggs in one flimsy basket,” Dugersuren says, referring to the Oyu Tolgoi mine. “A nation that is dependent on one corporation for 35 percent of its GDP is not in a safe place.”

In April, Ulaanbaatar demonstrated its support for agricultural development with 86.2 million dollars in soft loans for cashmere companies, garment industries and dairy producers. But limited private investment and scant infrastructure continue to check the agriculture sector’s growth potential, according to French entrepreneur and dairy expert Didier le Goff, who started a cheese factory on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar in 2010. “Mining is fast money for a short time, agriculture is slow money forever,” says le Goff.

He believes Mongolia has a unique potential to become an exporter of “organic bio-products” given the country’s nomadic heritage. But he admits sourcing local milk year round is difficult and enormous challenges still exist to rebuild and streamline supply chains in the vast country.

A 2009 report from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) noted that 70 percent of milk consumed in urban Mongolia was reconstituted from imported milk powder, despite a livestock population of over 30 million animals – or about 10 animals per every Mongolian citizen.