Rural projects change thousands of lives

It's a special day for 53-year-old Karimov Pulad. His son’s car leading a wedding cortege was the first vehicle to cross a newly reconstructed bridge in the Varzob district, some 35 km north of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. Prior to this, his village, called Begar, was cut off from the main highway across the River Varzob in the rainy seasons of spring and autumn until the US-based NGO, CARE helped rehabilitate the bridge. Pulad said the bridge had changed the lives of hundreds of people in his village. "I am very happy because we depend on the bridge so much for movement," he told IRIN. "Now we can take our potatoes to market easily," he said. Many of the 250 families living in Begar on the banks of the Varzob river are dependant on selling fresh fruit and vegetables and wheat as well as livestock to earn a living. Five years after the end of the civil war, Tajikistan faces many challenges on its path towards recovery. This, the most impoverished former Soviet republic, lacks the resources needed to change the lives of its six million citizens, 80 percent of whom live on little more than US $100 a year. With some 70 percent of Tajiks living in rural areas, the rehabilitation of the mountainous country’s war-damaged and crumbling infrastructure is thought to be essential for economic and social progress. In the course of its search for resources, the community finally accessed a British government donation of some US $2,500 to CARE’s Food and Economic Security in Tajikistan programme. Under an agreement, 95 percent of the cost of the bridge was covered by the grant, while the community raised the rest of the cash. CARE’s director in Tajikistan, Genevieve Abel, told IRIN that her organisation's main role was to match community efforts with available resources rather than directly solve problems for people. "We are helping communities to build on their own skills and knowledge," she said. A project such as that of the Begar bridge served to provide short-term employment as well as restore critical rural infrastructure. Varzob's local government supports such activities, and in the case of the Begar bridge, actually contributed some funds. "Unemployment and the depleted infrastructure are our basic problems, and such initiatives address our most urgent needs," Nal Nisairudin Ibadov, head of the local government, told IRIN. However, he maintained that the effects of such projects remained limited to the household level. "We have a long way to go and it will happen gradually," he said. According to Abel, rural development is critical for Tajikistan’s future. "You have 70 percent of the population depending on seven percent of the land in Tajikistan for livelihoods," she said. She asserted, however, that bringing about rural development not only required infrastructure development but also the creation of access to markets, credit and technical assistance. "There is no agricultural extension service to help small- or large-scale farmers to access innovative technology to help them grow the best crops on their land, and all these systems will need to be developed," she said. With such projects making such a huge impact on people's lives, the need for more schemes in rural areas of the Central Asian nation is crucial. In the neighbouring village of Takob, some 15 km from the Begar bridge, Akramova Makhjirat and her friend Gul Nisa no longer have to take a long and laborious walk to fetch basic water supplies. Under another CARE-assisted project an irrigation channel was extended by five km which meant that it now reached their hamlet. "Our most basic problem was [the lack of] this channel, which is solved now," Makhjirat told IRIN. "This will save us from bringing water from the spring, which was exhausting."