Inchcape

Come autumn and a familiar scene dominates Uzbekistan's countryside.

The vast cotton fields are busy with workers, picking the country's most important crop. Among them are doctors and nurses, accountants, teachers and college students.

As a result many schools and colleges are closed and even hospitals are affected.

And this year it's become clear that even foreign companies operating in Uzbekistan are being asked to chip in.

More than 20 years since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan continues its practice of mobilising people for the cotton harvest.

In Soviet times, swathes of Uzbek agricultural land were turned into vast cotton plantations, irrigated by water diverted from major rivers - a system which in turn led to the Aral sea ecological disaster.

Mass mobilisation was standard practice with anyone resisting the effort branded as unpatriotic.

That too hasn't changed. But while Uzbeks have long been used to the system, foreign investors find themselves being asked to contribute as well, even though there is no formal demand to pay up.

Campaigners say that workers are issued with daily quotas but receive little pay

Campaigners say that workers are issued with daily quotas but receive little pay

Challenging and difficult

This year, the Swedish-Finish mobile phone operator TeliaSonera, which operates Uzbekistan's second largest mobile company Ucell, was reported to be making payments towards the cotton harvest.

The news emerged after TeliaSonera shareholders went to Tashkent on a fact-finding mission.

Carina Lundberg Markow, a representative of insurance company Folksam, told BBC Uzbek that Ucell staff outlined how companies in Uzbekistan had three options of sponsoring the cotton harvest.

"One was providing personnel to send out on the fields picking cotton," Ms Markow said. "The second option was to pay for employees of other companies."

Ucell, she said, didn't do either of these, but went for another option....