Labour migration on the rise

Labour migration is on the rise in Tajikistan, an impoverished Central Asian nation with a population of some 6 million, mainly due to socioeconomic difficulties and high unemployment. "The number of the Tajik labour migrants in Russia is on the rise," Abdumajit Surkhakov, the representative of the Tajik ministry of labour and social security in Moscow, told IRIN from the Russian capital, adding that according to his estimates that number had increased by almost 10 percent over the past months of 2003 as compared to 2002. Surkhakov also said that there were some 125,000 officially registered Tajik labour migrants in Russia as of 1 January 2003, citing the Russian interior ministry. However, he estimated the real number to be some 500,000, hinting to the fact that most of the migrants were working in the country illegally. He went on to say that in the Moscow region alone there were between 50,000 and 60,000 labour migrants. Said Jalilov, the head of the state-run Tajikhorijakor organisation dealing with external labour migration, told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, that his organisation had sent about 550 legal labour migrants to Russia in the first six months of 2003. According to the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) recent report on the labour migration in Tajikistan, the causes of the phenomenon were mainly socioeconomic, and the majority of the Tajik labour migrants - some 80 percent - were going to Russia and to a lesser extent to neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Asked about the main problems Tajik migrants faced in the destination country, Surkhakov said these mostly concerned the system of registration, because the new law on the status of foreign citizens in the Russian Federation and its enforcement mechanisms were far from satisfactory. The registration process was extremely difficult in Russia, Surkhakov noted, asserting that not only that the duration of legal residence by Tajik labour migrants strictly limited duration but even the procedure of achieving this restricted entitlement was very costly for the applicant. Surkhakov went on to say that another problem was the system of taxation of employers under the new law, which constituted a big barrier to legalising the presence of labour migrants. Illegal migration could create conditions for abuse of the rights of migrants, like back wages or paying less, along with other issues of social security that might be neglected by employers, he added. Regarding efforts to tackle the issue, Surkhakov told IRIN that the governments of Tajikistan and Russia were due in early October to sign a bilateral agreement on protecting rights of labour migrants. Given the current situation, one of the issues to be pursued was enhancing the awareness of labour migrants on legal issues in the destination country, an official of the migration service noted. "We are working to provide information to them [labour migrants] so that they know the legislation of the Russian Federation," he said. Meanwhile, a poll jointly conducted by the IOM and the Tajik Sharq research centre had revealed that money transfers via banks to Tajikistan in 2002 totalled almost US $80 million, the Tajik news agency, Asia-Plus, said. The report also noted that considerable amounts of currency were reaching Tajikistan both through illegal transfers and in the form of cash. The state budget in Tajikistan for 2002 totalled about $160 million.