DUSHANBE, January 30, 2013, Asia-Plus — Tajik law enforcement authorities seized 5,978 kilograms of narcotics last year, which was 41.1 percent more than in 2011, Bunafsha Odinayeva, the deputy director of the Drug Control Agency (DCA) under the President of Tajikistan, announced at a news conference in Dushanbe on January 29.
According to her, a totaled included 515 kilograms of heroin, 630 kilograms of raw opium and 4,832 kilograms of cannabis.
During the report period, security forces detained 936 people on drug charges. “858 (92.2 percent) of them are temporarily unemployed persons, 70 (7 percent) are people provided with jobs and eight (0.8 percent) are students,” Odinayeva noted.
39 percent of the drug related crimes were committed last year by residents of Dushanbe, 31 percent by residents of Sughd province, 18 percent by residents of Khatlon province, 9.0 percent by residents of districts subordinate to the center, and 3.0 percent by residents of the Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO).
In 2012, 297 Tajik nationals were detained outside Tajikistan on drug charges and a total of 406 kilograms of narcotics were confiscated from them. Of them, 274 people were detained in Russia, 16 in Uzbekistan, three in Kazakhstan, thee in Kyrgyzstan, and one in Armenia, the deputy director said.
