Tuesday, June 30, 2009 DUSHANBE: Tajikistan's president on Tuesday urged his people to donate money to charity rather than perform the annual hajj pilgrimage amid a severe economic crisis in the overwhelmingly Muslim state. "I call on future pilgrims from Tajikistan, during the global economic and financial crisis... to donate their savings to charity," President Emomali Rakhmon said in a statement. The pilgrimage to Mecca, to be held in November this year, is one of the five pillars of Islam, which the Koran holds as a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for every able Muslim who can afford it. Every year some 5,000 Tajiks undertake the hajj to Saudi Arabia -- a journey which costs them an average of 3,000 dollars. Rakhmon targeted his appeal at Tajiks having already completed the hajj two or three times, he said. "In a time of crisis your savings could go to needy families!" In 2007, in an effort to spare families the costs of feeding the hundreds of guests who would by tradition have been invited to weddings or circumcisions in Tajikistan, Rakhmon ordered a limit of 150 guests at such events. Parties in the countries are now controlled by a local official whose job it is to count the number of guests. Ex-Soviet Tajikistan, a mountainous former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan and China, has struggled to provide even basic services for its citizens in recent years, with blackouts the norm throughout much of last winter. Its situation became critical after the financial slowdown cut one of its main sources of revenues in remittances from a large diaspora of migrant labourers in Russia. Earlier this year, torrential rains flooded farmlands and provoked mud slides, causing some 100 million dollars in damages. The Central Asian state of 7.7 million people is 124th of the 179 countries ranked by the United Nations' Development Programme on their standards of living.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 DUSHANBE: Tajikistan's president on Tuesday urged his people to donate money to charity rather than perform the annual hajj pilgrimage amid a severe economic crisis in the overwhelmingly Muslim state. "I call on future pilgrims from Tajikistan, during the global economic and financial crisis... to donate their savings to charity," President Emomali Rakhmon said in a statement. The pilgrimage to Mecca, to be held in November this year, is one of the five pillars of Islam, which the Koran holds as a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for every able Muslim who can afford it. Every year some 5,000 Tajiks undertake the hajj to Saudi Arabia -- a journey which costs them an average of 3,000 dollars. Rakhmon targeted his appeal at Tajiks having already completed the hajj two or three times, he said. "In a time of crisis your savings could go to needy families!" In 2007, in an effort to spare families the costs of feeding the hundreds of guests who would by tradition have been invited to weddings or circumcisions in Tajikistan, Rakhmon ordered a limit of 150 guests at such events. Parties in the countries are now controlled by a local official whose job it is to count the number of guests. Ex-Soviet Tajikistan, a mountainous former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan and China, has struggled to provide even basic services for its citizens in recent years, with blackouts the norm throughout much of last winter. Its situation became critical after the financial slowdown cut one of its main sources of revenues in remittances from a large diaspora of migrant labourers in Russia. Earlier this year, torrential rains flooded farmlands and provoked mud slides, causing some 100 million dollars in damages. The Central Asian state of 7.7 million people is 124th of the 179 countries ranked by the United Nations' Development Programme on their standards of living.
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