DUSHANBE, April 29, 2009, Asia-Plus — Funds for providing vulnerable families with energy-saving light lams, which are also known as compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), will be provided from this year’s national budget, Gurez Baqoyev, an official with the Ministry of Finance (MoF), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
“The budget for this year earmarked 36.3 million somoni for payment of communal services” subsidies to poor families and part of these funds will go to providing these families with CFLs,” Baqoyev said, noting that a MoF worked out draft amendments to government’s resolution on rules of determining poor families, fixing communal services’ subsidies to them. The document has already been submitted for consideration to relevant ministries and organization, he added.
“Special commissions are currently working in the provinces to find out the actual number of the vulnerable families,” said finance official, “Therefore, it is still premature to speak about any specific amount of funds that is expected to be allocated for these purposes. However, if we assume that there are some 250,000 such families in the country and four high-quality CFLs are purchased for each of these families, we will need 12 million somoni, because the price of one high-quality CFL in Tajikistan is now 12 somoni.”
Baqoyev noted that in accordance with government’s resolution on rules of determining vulnerable families, the vulnerable family was the family, in which an average monthly income per one family member did not exceed 50 percent of the minimum wage rate. We will recall that current minimum wage in Tajikistan amounts to 60 somoni per month.
Baqoyev further added that relevant organizations were currently discussing the mechanism of distribution of money or CFLs themselves to poor families.
Experts say that compared to general service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs generally use less power, have a longer rated life, but a higher purchase price. The average rated life of a CFL is between 8 and 15 times that of incandescents.
