Three women, aged 51, 49 and 25, died after being hit by a car in Asaka district of the Andijan province on Thursday at about 8:00 AM. They were watering the plants along the Andijan-Shakhrikhan highway.
Two versions, of how the incident happened and who those women were, surfaced. The first by the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office which said those women were the employees of the municipal street sweeping department of Asaka district.
According to the other version by some independent media outlets, the victims were not the full-time employees of the municipal department but were the “forced volunteers” from the local neighbourhood who were mobilized to clean the streets and water the flowers planted along the road.
Curiously on the same day the President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was supposed to arrive in Andijan province. By a coincidence (or not) those women were improving the appearance of the road along which the presidential motorcade was supposed to pass.
The truth must be somewhere in between these two versions. Those women were probably the workers of the cleaning department, however they were mobilized to perform absolutely unnecessary, the window dressing activities ordered by local authorities who wished to please the President, or by fear of being sacked.
Rooted in the authoritarianism, the tradition of hastily sweeping streets, repainting fences and covering up old buildings was perfected in Uzbekistan We have verified information that many employees of budget-financed organizations are still forced to sweep streets ahead of presidential trips and major events (conferences, festivals), with the local authorities resorting to much more sophisticated ways of concealing their ill-deeds, due to the Uzbek government’s international commitments and declarations.
Last year in March, Diana Enekeeva, 23, a female teacher in Samarkand's Kattakurgan district died after she was hit by Kamaz heavy truck when she was cleaning the Samarkand-Bukhara highway ahead of the President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's trip to Samarkand province.
