Ads for 'harmful' mobiles pulled down
Rakhmon, who has ruled the impoverished ex-Soviet state for nearly two decades, chastised the country’s mostly rural population for spending too much time chatting on their phones, which he said were bad for their health.
“On behalf of the mayor, restrictions have been placed on outdoor advertisements for mobile telephone companies,” a spokesman for the Dushanbe mayor’s office, Shavkat Sayidov, told AFP.
“Their banners and billboards are to be removed from the capital. In place of advertisements by commercial mobile providers, there will be placed information which is useful for your health,” he added.
Tajikistan, the poorest state to emerge from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has achieved impressive mobile penetration, with some six million users out of a population of less than eight million, Rakhmon said.
But he blamed the gadgets for causing health problems, and said that they are too expensive his citizens, who live on an average of less than 175 dollars (133 euros) per month, according to IMF statistics.
“Every family already has six phones, but a year from now it will be one phone per person,” Rakhmon said last week.
“It destroys the family, when on average they spend several hundred dollars a year (on their phones).”
It is not the first time Rakhmon has attempted to impose fiscal responsibility from on high in the isolated country, which shares a long and porous border with war-wracked Afghanistan.
In 2007 the former collective farm boss proposed legislation limiting the amount of money that could be spent on weddings and funerals, both significant social events and sources of prestige in the majority-Muslim country.
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