Focus on southern labour migration

Rasul Mirzaev, a former teacher in southern Uzbekistan, has fond memories of Soviet times. The retired professor recalls nostalgically the days when most people had a secure job, good working conditions and stable salaries. But his longing for the past also has a very personal aspect. His eldest son, Odyl, 42, went to Russia in search of work in the early 1990s where he reportedly died under mysterious circumstances in the central Russian province of Perm in May 2003. Official documents provided to the Mirzaev family said that Odyl drowned in a lake. But the family does not believe it. "The local gypsies went there with him," Rasul continued. "Some of them confirmed that he died as a result of a beating. The public prosecutor's office did not investigate the real reason for my son's death." Sadly, that was not the end of Rasul's suffering. In 2002, his second son, Ravshan, 33, also went to Russia. Like thousands of other young men, he decided to go there in search of work to help his parents. "I don't know whether he is in Kazakhstan or in Russia. Since that time I have received neither a letter nor a message from him. I now have just one adopted son and I am not going to lose him. I will not let him work in Russia on any account," asserted Rasul. SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM "Working in Russia has become common for [many] Uzbek citizens," Yadgar Turlibekov, head of the Kashkadarya office of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU), a local rights group, told IRIN. "People lost hope of employment [locally] and thus to be able to provide for their families. Many Uzbek citizens work in Russia and they do not always return home successfully." Observers cite unemployment and poverty as the driving forces behind labour migration from southern Uzbekistan to Russia. "We lack jobs," Bokhodir Rakhimov, a 33-year-old inhabitant of Karshi, told IRIN. "And if there is some work here, then salaries are too low. Moreover, they are not paid on time." Perhaps Rasul's nostalgia is misplaced. According to the provincial authorities, 37 percent of the province's 800,000 workforce were jobless in 1991, when Uzbekistan became independent. By October 2004, that figure fell to 34 percent. Poverty is gnawing away at once prosperous parts of the republic. The World Bank estimates that some 28 percent of the whole country's population - or about 6.7 million people - are currently unable to meet their basic food needs. Two-thirds of them live in rural areas. A member of the Miraki community in the southern Shahrisabz district asserted that they were now living on the money they earned in Sakha Republic (Yakutiya), in Russia's far east. "There is nothing for us to do here," one of the locals, who didn't want to be identified, told IRIN. "We are building houses in Yakutiya [as wage labourers] and our families cannot survive without this money." Halima Rajabova, deputy chairwoman of the community council, told IRIN that every family in the 500 family-odd community had a member working in Russia. "Earlier, livelihoods depended on local earnings and agriculture. But now there is no work and they cannot feed families by working their individual plots of land. People have no choice but to leave for Russia," Rajabova explained. "One needs US $100 [monthly] on average in order to provide for a family," continued Rajabova. "For instance, I'm paid $15 - barely enough for bread and butter. What else can we do?" Such questions are telling. An average monthly salary in southern Uzbekistan is barely $30 in urban areas and even less, $10, in rural regions. For example, Rasul, the teacher, receives a pension of about $40 a month, while his wife's pension is only $16. Rasul supports seven people, including his nine-year-old adopted son, the wife of his deceased son and four grandchildren. NUMBER OF MIGRANTS Zoir Eshnaev, head of the local employment department, told IRIN that more than 12,000 people from the region were working legally in other countries. "We don't have any data on the number of illegal labourers in Russia or other countries, but based on what we hear, that number should be many times higher." Although the precise number of Uzbek labour migrants working in Russia is not known, the number of such migrants leaving for South Korea, Russia and Kazakhstan from Central Asia's most populous nation has reportedly increased. According to the Uzbek Ministry of Labour, more than 700,000 Uzbek citizens are working in various countries. Some experts suggest that Russia's Samara province alone may host up to 24,000 Uzbek migrants. A recent report by Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said that there were approximately 600,000 Uzbek migrant workers, mainly working in Russia and Kazakhstan. But the Kazakh government itself has suggested that there are at least 500,000 Uzbeks currently working in Kazakhstan alone (with most working in the southern regions on the Kazakh-Uzbek border and on construction sites in Kazakhstan's new capital, Astana). Some unconfirmed reports claim that their number could be well over a million. Uzbek migrants abroad send remittances of about $500 million home annually - a sum equivalent to 5.7 percent of Uzbekistan's GDP in 2003, according to some estimates. MIGRANTS' PROFILE Bokhodir Rakhimov is one of thousands of Uzbek labourers in Russia, working in a town near Moscow as a builder. He told IRIN that they had to keep a low profile and had no social rights. He came back in March 2004 with a head injury. He suffered trauma when he fell down a flight of stairs at work. "I worked in several towns near Moscow," he said. "They do not let us work there. If the police arrest us, we will be deported from Russia. According to Russian law, deported persons are not allowed to enter Russia within the next six years." When Bokhodir was injured, his employers took him to hospital, where he could not get medical aid because he lacked the necessary money and his employers refused to pay for him. He was subsequently sent back home. Most Uzbek migrants work in the construction industry or other sectors, doing mainly manual jobs. The majority of them are aged between 30 and 45, mostly staying and working illegally in the country. According to human rights activists, due to their illegal status, many labour migrants lack legal and social protection in destination countries, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. Ismat Achilov, deputy head of Karshi city administration, confirmed to IRIN that many local residents were migrating abroad for job opportunities. "There are other ways. That is through the labour exchange. They could have official labour status. But they cannot wait for document preparation and therefore they chose non-official ways of searching for work in Russia," he claimed. Echoing that view, Eshnaev said this aspect made irregular workers particularly exposed in recipient countries. "Choosing this [irregular] way of job seeking, they lose the protection of their legal rights and the [correct] remuneration of their labour. There are so many people out there in other regions who work just to feed themselves," he said. LABOURERS BOUGHT AND SOLD Muzaffar Aminov, a resident of the Muzrabad district of southern Surkhandarya province, left for Russia in June 2004 and returned in November. Many Uzbek citizens become victims of human trafficking and he was one of them, he claimed. "I was sold to a Chechen by Uzbeks. Then he sold me to an Armenian. And each of them wanted their money back. So, I worked for over five months just to get my passport back. And I came back without any money," Muzaffar told IRIN. Another resident from the Sherabad district of the province, Uigun Himmat, went to work in Russia several times. Some of his trips were successful, but last year he too fell victim to traffickers. "First I found myself in Kazakhstan," Uigun told IRIN. "I worked for a family with three daughters. I had to even wash the underwear of these girls. Their father often whipped me when he was not happy with my work." "Some time later I managed to move to Russia and there they took my passport away again. Then they resold it to other people and I found myself in the hands of another master," Uigun said, adding that he returned home without any money as his employer paid him just to get back home. Meanwhile, local rights activists have expressed concern over the problem. "We conduct monitoring of labour migration," Mutabar Tajibaev, head of the Plamennye Serdtsa Club (Flaming Hearts) NGO, based in the eastern Ferghana province, told IRIN. "We met many people who worked in Russia. They are resold as goods as soon as they cross the border. First Uzbeks sell them to Kazakhs, then Kazakhs sell them to Russians. That is the way. A network of Uzbek slave-trafficking is created. In the end, when they return home, the Uzbek police detain them and extort what is left." TASHKENT'S NEGLECT OF THE ISSUE The human rights activist also expressed his dismay over the apathy of Uzbek authorities. Tashkent complicates the situation by not paying attention to the protection of its citizens' rights, Tajibaev maintained. "We are preparing an appeal to the parliaments of all the countries where Uzbek citizens work," said Tajibaev. "That is: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and some European countries. I think that the international community has to know that the Uzbek authorities do not care about the rights of their citizens." Talib Yakubov, head of the HRSU, said that the reason for such an approach by Uzbekistan's government was its authoritarianism. "When an authoritarian power governs a people the honour and dignity of citizens come last. It is because of the policy of the authorities that people leave this country. But representatives of the authorities do not care."