8-10 officials of Cotton Campaign may be allowed to visit Uzbekistan’s cotton fields for monitoring, the Minister of Employment and Labor Relations Sherzod Kudbiev said.
In July 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor proposed to remove Uzbekistan cotton from a list of products that may have been produced by forced or child labor. After that, Cotton Campaign sent a comments letter to the department requesting not to remove Uzbek cotton from this list. Cotton Campaign believes that, despite significant progress, cases of forced child labour at cotton fields were recorded in 2017. Kudbiev said that child labor was no longer an issue, and that he got acquainted with the above-mentioned documents.
"Cotton Campaign is not the whole world community. We have heard about their long time plans to visit Uzbekistan, we are not banning them from doing so and are open to everyone," the minister said. He also suggested to the local human rights defenders Elena Urlayeva and Malokhat Eshankulova also get involved in monitoring of cotton harvest.
"Isolated cases of forced labor does not mean that we have such state coordinated policies. Any executive involved in forced labor will be punished - that's the state’s policy. Forced labor will not be tolerated, there will be no way back back," Kudbiev stressed.
