Passport problem strangling labour migration

Thousands of Kyrgyz labour migrants normally working abroad are in limbo in the Central Asian state as they cannot leave the country due to an ongoing passport problem. Ainura Tabyshalieva, a 50-year-old shoe trader working in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg, came back to Kyrgyzstan in August to get a new passport as her old one had expired. Initially hoping to return to her flourishing small business in Russia quickly after sorting her travel documents out, she has been stranded in her home country for the past five months as she cannot get a new passport. “I feed not only my family, I have two daughters and a small son, but also my aged parents, who live in the country,” Ainura said in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. “I have no idea what to do now - in Russia I was making quite good money. I hope the government begins issuing passports to those who need them as soon as possible. And there are thousands of people like me,” she maintained. She is not alone in her quest for a travel document. A crowd of over 30 people, many of whom are labour migrants working in Russia, queues every day outside the passport unit of the provincial police department in the southern city of Osh. “I lost my passport in Russia in March 2005 and came back to get a new one. I run a small shop in the city of Novosibirsk, but it has been 10 months since I came back and I still cannot get a new passport. They always say come tomorrow or, we don’t have new passports,” said Aigul, 34, another labour migrant without documents. According to Kyrgyzstan’s migration and employment service, there are between 400,000 and 1 million Kyrgyz labour migrants in Russia, and between 50,000 and 70,000 in Kazakhstan. Many of them need to change passports that have expired or will need to do so in the near future, experts say. Some Kyrgyz media reports said that more than 400,000 Kyrgyz nationals, including those working abroad, need new passports, or to renew travel documents. Kyrgyzstan’s population is some 5 million, of whom more than 40 percent live below the national poverty line, according to the World Bank. The economic impact of the lack of passports could have a serious impact on Kyrgyzstan’s remittance-dependent economy. Money sent home by Kyrgyz labourers abroad is a vital source of sustenance for thousands of families in the Central Asian state. According to Kubanychbek Isabekov, a Kyrgyz lawmaker and head of the parliament’s commission on labour migration, Kyrgyz labourers sent home some US $160 million in remittances in 2004 via the international Western Union money transfer system alone. In the first six months of 2005 that figure stood at $124 million. Experts estimate that in 2006 the amount of remittances through Western Union will be around $200 million - equal to the country’s annual state budget. The shortage of passports emerged in 2004, when in the spring of that year, the government announced that it would introduce a new system, with two separate documents – an internal ID card and a passport - replacing passports issued in 1994 that included both documents in one. The decision came after international pressure - due to their poor quality, Kyrgyz passports were easily forged and frequently used by international criminal gangs as well as certain extremist groups. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) provided technical and information support to Kyrgyzstan to introduce new passports, with the change of passports to be completed by the end of 2004. The government had continuously postponed the actual distribution of the new travel documents and the new leadership, after the ouster of former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev in March 2005, failed to resolve the problem quickly. The Kyrgyz National Information Technologies Agency (NITA), the agency responsible for issuing the documents, and the passports department in the Internal Affairs Ministry have said that the minimum period required for issuing passports is currently 45 days. The slow process has inevitably led to corruption, some labour migrants have charged. “Do you think a migrant who arrived from Russia, Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan can solve his or her issues with regard to a passport within one and a half months? There is a system of bribes,” Isabekov claimed, adding that the amount of money needed varied from US $150 to $1,000 if a travel document was required urgently. There seems no immediate resolution to the problem. Only 100 passports are produced daily as well as about 100 internal ID cards, Kyrgyz media reported. Medetbek Kerimkulov, vice-prime minister, was quoted by the Kyrgyz AkiPress news agency on Monday as saying that the passport problem would be resolved only by the end of 2006.