The harvesting of cotton has always been a major part of Turkmenistan’s agricultural sector of economy...In 2008 Berdymukhamedov [President of Turkmenistan] legally forbade the forced labor of children and university students in the agricultural sector...That does not mean...that child labor is no longer used...In the countryside...there are still children in the cotton fields. Some go voluntarily...Others go in place of their parents...[E]very year, all employees of the social services sector are forced to harvest cotton under the threat of being fired. Tens of thousands of teachers, doctors, mailmen, bank, factory and other industrial employees throughout the country are forced to stop their work and join the battle for the harvest...The teachers and the doctors do not protest openly because their superiors tell them that their refusal to pick cotton will result in immediate firing and replacement with other workers...Service workers from Turkmenabat...go out to the fields with overnights...150 employees of house management department were sent to the fields...They slept on mattresses they brought from home, placed directly on the floor of a school gym. They were offered a meal only once a day, in the evening, and the meal itself was worse than what is usually served to the prisoners in state prisons...The same water was used for drinking as was for showering.