DUSHANBE, March 4, 2013, Asia-Plus — On the occasion of the Day of the Mother and the Navrouz holiday 1.1821 million somoni have been allocated from mayor’s reserve fund to give incentives to female employees of the Dushanbe public utilities, Shavkat Saidov, a spokesman for the Dushanbe mayor’s office said.
2,507 female employees of the Dushanbe public utilities will receive 700 somoni each.
Besides, 14 female veterans of labor and 13 female activists from Dushanbe will receive 600 somoni each and 82 employees of the Dushanbe mayor’s office and administrations of Dushanbe’s districts will receive 500 somoni each, the spokesman said.
We will recall that International Women’s Day has been known in Tajikistan as the Day of the Mother since March 2009. Congratulating women on March 8, 2009, President Emomali Rahmon said that International Women”s Day has only been celebrated on March 8 for about 100 years, but that ancient Aryan women — the ancestors of the Tajiks — had special days both for mothers, specifically, and for women in general.
Navrouz, which literary means New Day in Persian, Dari and Tajik languages, is the traditional Iranian new year holiday, celebrated by Iranian and many other peoples. It marks the first day of spring and is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox (the start of spring in the northern hemisphere), which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. Today, the festival of Navrouz is celebrated in many countries. In September 2009, the UN”s cultural agency, UNESCO, included Navrouz in its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. On February 23, 2010, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the International Day of Navrouz.
