DUSHANBE, October 12, Asia-Plus  -- All students at higher educational institutions that have been sent to harvest cotton will return to classes on October 16, First Deputy Education Minister, Farhod Rahimov, announced at a news conference on October 11.   

According to him, 90 percent of the second, third- and fourth-year students have participated in the cotton-harvesting campaign voluntarily.   

In this connection, the deputy minister dwelled on a report recently released by some media that a group of students at Khujand University of Law, Business and Politics had allegedly refused to go to cotton plantations.  Rahimov said that a commission comprising representatives from the Ministry of Education (MoE) had visited Sughd’s Asht district, where students from the mentioned university have helped farmers harvest cotton.  “During a meeting with me, the students said that they had not signed a letter that had been sent to the Sughd regional government,” the MoE official said, noting that of 3,000 students of that university, who were supposed to be sent to harvest cotton, 2,991 have participated in the cotton-harvesting campaign.