Students of six institutes and 37 colleges and lyceums of Samarkand will work cotton plantations this week.

A daily quota was set for cotton-pickers from cities in the past. It averaged 50 kilograms per person. Sources say that this practice is abandoned now and that financial stimuli are used. Cotton-pickers are paid every five days - 64 sums per kilogram (almost twice the sum paid last year).

Students normally try to obtain medical vouchers to miss the cotton-picking duty but medical establishments do not issue any this year. Medical examination is held in the clinics in the rural areas. Only the handicapped, pregnant women, and women with children are excused.

According to the Samarkand administration, more than 27,000 people will work cotton fields this year. The region intends to harvest 268,300 tons.

Ferghana.Ru correspondents in Turkey report that schoolchildren harvest cotton there too, helping their parents. It is, however, decided by the parents themselves, not by the state. According to the newspaper Millijat, only five pupils out of 35 attend classes at one of the schools in Konuklu (Shanly-Urfa region). All the rest work in the fields.

As a matter of fact, this state of affairs is typical of Turkey. Before the school year, teachers visited their pupils' families and asked adults to send their children to school. These days, they visit them in the fields and try to persuade children to return to school. Few of them do, because adults need help with cotton-picking.

Pupils and students harvest cotton all over Central Asia - in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. The difference is, cotton-picking there is a duty not to be shirked. Uzbek students usually apply for medical vouchers relieving them of the duty, but no vouchers are issued this year. Even whoever is usually excused (young people with myopia, after hepatitis, and so on) was sent to the fields.