Tursunzade

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Location of Tursunzade in Tajikistan

Tursunzade, also called Tursunzoda, is a city in western Tajikistan, known for its aluminium smelting plant.

It is located at Lat: 38:30:33N (38.5092), Lon: 68:16:19E (68.272), 60 km from Dushanbe, near the border with Uzbekistan. It is near several rivers, the Shirkent, Karatag, and Kafarnigan. Its population was given as 40,600 in the 1989 census, falling to 39,000 in 2000, and estimated at 37,000 in 2006.

The city has two television stations, TV-REGAR and TV-TADAZ, two newspapers, Aluminiy Tojikiston and Regar, and a radio station.

[edit] History

Tursunzade was originally the village of Regar, meaning "a town on sand". In 1978, it was renamed in honor of the Tajik national poet, Mirzo Tursunzade. Its railroad station is still called Regar. The city developed from a village as a regional centre for an agricultural district in the western part of the Gissar valley. Fruits, especially grapefruit, vegetables, and cotton are grown in the district. In the 1960s, the nearby Nurek Dam hydroelectric power station on the Vakhsh River made the city a good location for industry, and besides the aluminium plant, there are also china, brick, cable, and cotton cleaning plants.

[edit] Aluminium plant

The Tajik aluminium smelting plant, TadAZ, in Tursunzade, is the largest aluminium manufacturing plant in Central Asia, and possibly the world, and Tajikistan's chief industrial asset. The country has no native aluminium ore, so the raw material for the plant has to be imported. Construction of the plant proper began in 1972, and the first pouring of aluminium took place on March 31, 1975. It consumes 40% of the country's electrical power, and a 2002 study found it responsible for notable fluorine water pollution in the region.