LONDON, Nov 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rights groups on Friday disputed findings by the United Nations showing Uzbekistan has nearly eliminated forced labour from its cotton industry, saying that exploitation is still "systematic".The annual cotton harvest in Uzbekistan is the world's largest recruitment operation, with about 2.6 million people temporarily picking cotton every year, according to the U.N. International Labour Organization (ILO).
Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov said last year that the Central Asian nation would no longer have thousands of students, teachers and healthcare workers picking the harvest - halting a practice widely condemned as forced labour.
On Thursday the ILO said 93 percent of people involved in the country's 2018 cotton harvest had worked voluntarily, and the systematic recruitment of students, teachers, doctors and nurses had ended.
Yet the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights said its own research since September found that public sector workers were still being forced to pick cotton by the state in Uzbekistan - one of the world's leading cotton exporters.
"Our evidence shows forced labour this year was still systematic and massive," Umida Niyazova, director at the forum, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.
The rights group monitored this year's cotton harvest in seven regions and interviewed at least 300 people who were forced to work or pay for workers to take their place, she said.
Neither the Uzbek labour ministry nor the embassy in London could be reached for comment.