Migrants from a Tajik village raised $188,000 for road repairs in their homeland

Basmana village is one of the largest villages in the Devashtich district of the Sughd region of Tajikistan. More than 10,000 people live here, although almost half of the residents have gone abroad or to the capital for work.

The main street of Basmana village, which is five kilometers long, has not been repaired since Soviet times. The situation changed quite recently, and not at all thanks to the authorities. Labor migrants who left the village collectively raised $188,000, or 2 million somoni: with this money, asphalt was laid on the main road in the village for the first time in half a century. “The road was full of potholes. People stumbled. It was also impossible to drive normally; the car shook all the time,” says Mahmadnazar Haknazarov, a resident of Basmana village.

“The road repair was initiated by three local entrepreneurs. They were supported by about four thousand labor migrants from the village,” says Rahmatullo Yurov, another resident of the district. “By ‘migrants,’ I also mean those who are currently working in Dushanbe and Khujand. The road workers are helped by the villagers themselves.” “I have about 20-25 relatives in labor migration. They all contributed from three to five thousand somoni,” says Abdumajid Olimov.

According to the villagers, this is not the first project supported and implemented by the local population. In Basmana, it has already become a tradition that wealthy residents, instead of, for example, going on a pilgrimage to Mecca or throwing lavish celebrations, donate funds to solve common problems. “Unlike other villages, people here go on pilgrimage less often. But they are guided by the principle of ‘help your neighbor,’ trying to do good for the community,” notes local resident Akbar Rahimov.

“Thank God, Haji Abdusamad did not go on pilgrimage, but spent the money he saved for the trip to buy a new transformer and install new electricity poles for the village named after Haji Hasanov,” says Jumaboy Shafiev, another resident of Basmana village. “He spent about 50,000 somoni on everything. This has been a great support for the villagers. In addition, residents are installing drainage ditches with their own money. Positive changes have been happening over the past two years.”

The main occupations of most residents of Basmana are agriculture and livestock breeding. For a long time, the primary issues of the village were road repairs and the installation of new water pipes. Although Basmana is one of the ancient villages of Tajikistan, the government has allocated almost no funds for the development of its infrastructure. Local authorities promise to complete the construction of a kindergarten, but they only did this after numerous appeals from the population. After the road repair is completed, the residents plan to build a children’s hospital using the same scheme.