Day: February 8, 2023

More than twenty tourist companies are expected to represent Tajikistan at the ITB Berlin 2023.

The Tourism Development Committee says the top managers of the Committee on February 3 met with heads of domestic tour operators that will take part at the international tourism fair in berlin next month.

Tajikistan’s tourist pavilion entitled “Tajikistan Is the Country for Tourism” will be organized at the fair in the area of 20 square meters to display the country’s achievement in tourism and relevant industries.

The ITB Berlin is the world's largest tourism trade fair. The companies represented at the fair include hotels, tourist boards, tour operators, system providers, airlines and car rental companies.

The ITB Berlin takes place annually in March at the Messe Berlin. The ITB Berlin (or just ITB) has been running since 1966 and now has managed to establish satellite events in China, India and Singapore.

Tourism is considered one of the sectors, which are hoped to promote further development of the national economy. However, tourism receipts-to-GDP ratio remains very low. Due to the coronavirus pandemic this ratio fell in 2019 to 0.3 percent, and in 2021, it rose 1.3 percent.

It is to be noted that the tourism industry is an economic sector among those most severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Tajikistan’s rich cultural heritage, hospitality and abundance of mountain snow peaks, rivers, lakes and recreational opportunities contribute to the development of country’s tourism industry. In 2018, Tajik Government announced a year of tourism development. The tourism sector is considered a priority for the development of Tajikistan’s economy. At the same time, undeveloped infrastructure and low levels of quality of services delay the growth of the tourism industry.

Source: Asia-Plus

The country lies on major fault lines that border the Anatolian Plate, Arabian Plate and Eurasian Plate, and is therefore prone to seismic activity.

Meteorologists reportedly revealed that a 225-kilometer stretch of the fault between the Anatolian Plate and the Arabian Plate has ruptured.

According to MailOnline, Italian seismologist Dr. Carlo Doglioni told Italy 24 news site that as a result, Turkiye could even have slipped by up to 'five to six meters compared to Syria'.

However, he added that this was all based on initial data, and more exact information would be available from satellites in the coming days.

Dr. Bob Holdsworth, a professor of structural geology at Durham University, said the plate shift was 'perfectly reasonable' given the magnitude of the earthquake.

He told MailOnline: 'There is a fairly predictable, widely documented relationship between the magnitude of an earthquake and the typical offset that occurs.

'As a rule of thumb, a magnitude 6.5 to 6.9 event is associated with an offset of around one meter – whilst the largest known earthquakes can involve offsets of 10 to 15 meters.

'The faults that slipped in Turkey on February 6 are strike-slip faults that involve mainly horizontal displacements, and so the overall offsets in the region of 3 to 6 meters proposed here are perfectly reasonable.

'Horizontal offsets of this kind can lead to the severing of major subsurface and surface infrastructure, including water mains, electricity cables, gas pipelines and tunnels.

'There may also be surface ruptures developed where the faults break through to the surface – these can offset roads, rivers and other features – including built structures.

'All this is in addition to the damage caused by shaking, liquefaction of soft sediment in valleys/basins and landslides.'

Experts say catastrophic earthquakes are caused when two tectonic plates that are sliding in opposite directions stick and then slip suddenly.

According to them, severe earthquakes normally occur over fault lines where tectonic plates meet, but minor tremors – which still register on the Richter scale – can happen in the middle of these plates.

Turkey is close to the intersection of three tectonic plates, meaning it is prone to earthquakes.

Source: Asia-Plus

According to her, the rescue team to help eliminate the consequences of earthquake in Turkiye is gathering at the Emergencies Committee’s rescue base in Luchob.

“The humanitarian aid and rescue equipment are also being delivered to the rescue base and a truck convoy carrying humanitarian aid and rescue equipment will move to the airport at 24:00,” the Emergencies Committee spokeswoman said.

As reported, the rescue team members include highly-skilled rescuers, surgeon and a doctor of traumatology.

The rescue team and the humanitarian aid will be carried to Turkiye by a plane of Turkish Airlines, the national flag carrier airline of Turkiye.

The departure time was not announced, but it is known that according to the flight schedule, this airline operates flight from Dushanbe to Turkiye at 3:00 am.

Recall, the Embassy of Turkiye in Dushanbe on February 7 announced collecting help for the quake victims in Turkiye.

Request to those who want to help the earthquake victims, please send the below-mentioned things to the Embassy of Turkiye in Dushanbe by the address: 17/2 Roudaki Avenue, Dushanbe. If possible, please bring things in transparent bags with a list of contents

You can call the embassy regarding the assistance to the quake victims by the following phone numbers: 487024100 and 487024108.

Media reports say the number of victims in Turkey and Syria continues to climb quickly more than 48 hours after earthquakes leveled cities and towns in the two countries.

The Washington Post reported on February 8 that the combined toll death toll surpassed 9,600 people on Wednesday, making it the world’s deadliest earthquake disaster in over a decade.

According to The Washington Post, Turkish officials reported Wednesday that 6,957 people died and 38,224 were injured.

The Tajik Embassy in Ankara told Asia-Plus Tuesday morning that there are were no Tajiks among the dead and injured as of February 7.

The Tajik Embassy has also launched a hotline for nationals of Tajikistan staying in the provinces hit by Monday’s devastating earthquake: + 90 312 491 16 07; + 90 538 594 32 10 (WhatsApp).

Source: Asia-Plus

Tajikistan is among top ten countries in terms of trips to Russia for any purpose (tourism, work, studying, private purposes and so forth).

Among the top three countries are Kazakhstan (2.5 million trips), Ukraine (2.4 million trips), and Uzbekistan (2.1 million trips).

They are followed by Tajikistan (1.6 million trips), Kyrgyzstan (866,200 trips), Abkhazia (663,100 trips), Armenia (491,600 trips), Azerbaijan (327,900 trips), Belarus (289,300 trips), and Turkiye (198,600 trips).

Last year, foreign nationals reportedly made 13.1 million trips to the Russia Federation for different purposes last year, which is more compared to the pandemic years of 2020 (9.7 million) and 2021 (12.1 million).

However it is fewer almost by 20 million or 2.5 times compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

Last year, 200,100 foreigners reportedly visited Russia as tourists, which 4.9 million or 25.5 times fewer than in the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and even less compared to the pandemic years of 2020 (335,800) and 2020 (288,300).

Last year, Germany, Turkiye and Iran were among the top three countries in terms of the number of tourism – 25,400, 22,600 and 14,600, respectively.

They are followed by Kazakhstan – 13,300 tourism trips and Cuba – 11,300 tourism trips.

Russia’s tourism industry cratered in 2022, especially among organized tours, as foreign travelers are staying away following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow Times reported in December last year that Sergei Romashkin, the head of Russian tour operator Delfin, estimated that organized tours to Russia have dropped 90% due in part to the negative image of Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, the ban of Visa and MasterCard use in the country, and Russia’s restrictive visa program.

Meanwhile, the popularity of Tajikistan as tourist destination for Russian nationals grew more than two times last year. Russian tourists beat their own five-year record, making trips to Tajikistan in 2022 more than three times (212 percent) than average over the previous years.

Source: Asia-Plus

Moscow has hosted the fifth round of consultations of the Secretaries of the Security Councils on Afghanistan without participation of the Taliban representative, Afghanistan’s Khaama Press news agency reported on February 8.

National Security Advisors of Iran, India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan were among the participants.

The Moscow security meeting was held in the absence of the representative of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, although Islamic Emirate’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid called on Moscow last week to invite a representative of the Afghanistan’s caretaker government.

Afghanistan’s TOLOnews reported on February 5 that Mujahid said: “The Islamic Emirate has not yet been invited but those meetings that discuss Afghanistan, Afghanistan should be included to defend its position and discuss the issues.”

IRNA notes that addressing a regional security dialogue on Afghanistan in Moscow on Wednesday, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) of Iran Ali Shamkhani said ultra-regional intervention in Afghanistan can cause the insecurity in the country to spread to the entire region.

He said that all countries with a role in Afghanistan should not allow ultra-regional forces to interfere in the country as he warned that the intervention would turn the instability in Afghanistan into a regional calamity.

Shamkhani reportedly noted that consolidation of peace and security in Afghanistan is a main priority for Iran as he insisted that millions of Afghan refugees have been accommodated in Iran despite the fact that the country is suffering from unilateral and illegal sanctions imposed by the United States.

The senior Iranian security official said that Afghanistan should seek to expand its national unity initiative to allow all people to participate in the politics and governance of the war-torn country.

He said stability in Afghanistan will be guaranteed if the country commits to its responsibilities regarding the control of terrorism.

The fifth round of consultations of the Secretaries of the Security Councils on Afghanistan has reportedly come as the security situation in Afghanistan is rapidly deteriorating and has already led to the closure of several foreign embassies in Kabul.

Experts note that less than two years after seizing power in Kabul, the Taliban movement, banned in Russia and unrecognized in the world, proved itself to emerge as a fast-growing power on the map of world terrorism, representing its rapidly developing Asian breed.

Source: Asia-Plus