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Tajik Couple Names Baby After Power Plant


A baby boy in Tajikistan has been named after the country’s Roghun hydropower plant.

Roghun was born in northern Sughd region on January 6, the day the cash-strapped Tajik government officially started to sell Roghun shares to people in order to raise $1.4 billion to complete its construction.

The Tajik government hopes the power plant will solve the country's crippling energy crisis.

It seems that a good deal of Tajik citizens are buying into the state power plant initiative: officials say ordinary citizens -- who earn an average of $80 a month -- have spent some $92 million to buy Roghun shares in just two days since the government has begun to sell them.

In fact, Roghun shares have become so popular that a newborn girl in the southern Yovon district has been named Sahmiya, which means “Share” in Tajik.

Both babies, Roghun and Sahmiya already own their own Roghun shares --- bought for them by their parents as well as the local authorities.

A genuine expression of patriotism or just some smart PR?

-- Farangis Najibullah

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