Turkmen Minister Dismissed After Unprecedented Strike

The dismissal last month of Turkmenistan’s minister in charge of the textile industry looked like just another routine sacking. But reports coming out of the country suggest Dortguly Aidogdiev may have been removed from his job following an unprecedented strike by textile workers.



Aidogdiev was officially sacked because of “serious flaws in his work and abuse of office”. As well as being in charge of the textile industry, he was deputy prime minister in a government in which President Saparmurad Niazov is prime minister.



As is commonly the case, President Niazov, who styles himself Turkmenbashi, held a cabinet meeting on May 16 at which he read out a list of Aidogdiev’s alleged sins.



With the disgraced minister present, the president said he had handed out senior posts to his relatives and individuals with criminal records, and said bribery had been rife in the ministry.



“You have wrecked the sector," said Turkmenbashi.



All this sounded like the standard charge-sheet that the president levels at officials who fall out of favour. It is always hard to assess how true such corruption allegations are, although they beg the question as to why no one in authority noticed theft on a large scale until the president’s surprise revelations.



In Aidogdiev’s case, however, chronic financial mismanagement leading to industrial unrest is likely to have prompted Turkmenbashi to act.



As part of a national-level investigation into the textile industry prompted by Aidogdiev’s removal, the prosecutor’s office in the eastern city of Turkmenabat has alleged substantial wrongdoing by managers.



Turkmenabat, formerly Charjou, is the main city of the Lebap region and has a number of plants producing cotton and woolen fabrics, and the country’s only silk weaving factory. Unprocessed cotton is Turkmenistan’s second most important export after gas, but in recent years the government has encouraged local manufacturing of jeans and other finished products.



Prosecutors allege that these factories ran a double-accounting system so that it looked as though the workers were being paid regularly when in fact wages remained unpaid for months.



“The management of these enterprises created a strange situation where on paper, in the accounts, everything looks fine and prosperous, but in reality the workers’ pockets were empty,” said a prosecution service officer who asked not to be named.



Irina Kubataeva, who has a white-collar job at the silk factory, said the false reports were sent up to the ministry in the capital Ashgabat, but she said the plant’s accountants were merely obeying instructions from the ministry, which was well aware of what was going on.



“These were orders from above,” she said. “The initiative came directly from the ministry.”



In reality, prosecutors say, managers at the Turkmenabat plants were not paying their workers, so that by May, wages were five months in arrears.



Not only that, but when prosecution staff paid surprise visits to the factories they found that managers were forcing staff to work weekends without extra pay.



“We’ve been working under that system for the last six months,” said Jora Mamedov, who works at a factory making cotton wool. “They make us come to work on Saturdays and Sundays and if you don’t, you get sacked immediately.”



Lebap was not the only region affected by these problems. In the Ahal region, where the capital Ashgabat is located, anger over unpaid wages even prompted a case of industrial action - almost unheard of in this tightly-controlled police state.



On May 15, the day before Aidogdiev’s public dismissal, workers at four cotton-processing plants in the Kaakhka district, 100 kilometres from the capital, went on strike because they had not been paid since the beginning of the year. The strikers held a demonstration in the central square of the town of Kaakhka to make their concerns heard.



There were no precise numbers of the number of people involved in the strike and protest meeting, but participants interviewed later suggested that about half of a total workforce of around 300 came out.



One of those who took part in the demonstration said they had acted out of desperation as the wage arrears compounded a harsh working environment, “We work six days a week in two shifts. Health and safety conditions leave a lot to be desired especially in the spinning department. The air is full of small cotton particles which we breathe in all the time.



“Our [monthly] wages don’t go over 100 [US] dollars. We don’t get extra pay for working in hazardous conditions as they say we get [free] milk instead. We know we’re entitled to the payments but our unions do not support us.”



He concluded, “What other options were left to us? We decided to go to the square and stage a protest.”



Another man said he was well aware of the possible consequences of the strike action, “We’ll probably lose our jobs now. But there was no other option – either way we had nothing to feed our families with.”



Wage arrears are common in the public sector, but their impact is perhaps hardest on small towns heavily dependent on a single industry, because the whole local economy is affected by the lack of income. People in such towns find it harder to sustain themselves by other means than those in rural areas who can to an extent live off the land, or in the cities where some find work as market traders.



The investigation into the textile industry appears to have had one positive, if unreported, outcome – managers have started paying out some of the back wages.



But at the same time the authorities look set to pick off anyone identified as a ringleader of the strike. A national security ministry staffer who asked to remain anonymous told IWPR that officers had been sent to the plants in Kaakhka to find out who was behind the strike.



Cotton plant worker Muhamed Berdyev said, “After the strike we got our wages, but only up till the end of February. They have promised to pay off all the arrears - but now we are in danger of being fired.”



Aman Serdarov and Bairam Nuriev are pseudonyms of journalists in Turkmenistan. Names of workers interviewed for this story have been changed in the interests of their safety.