New protocol with Russia offers protection for labour migrants

A protocol recently signed between Kyrgyzstan and Russia envisages some preferential treatment for Kyrgyz labour migrants in Russia and is expected to facilitate their life there and provide improved social protection. "These amendments [being incorporated in the protocol] are providing some preferences to our citizens," Vasiliy Kravtsov, the deputy head of the external labour migration section at the Kyrgyz foreign ministry's migration service department, told IRIN from the capital, Bishkek. "Since 1 November 2002, Russia has completely changed its migration policy, and all the Kyrgyz labour migrants there should have been deported as illegal ones," Bermet Moldobaeva, an International Organisation for Migration (IOM) project coordinator in Kyrgyzstan, told IRIN from Bishkek. "Therefore, Kyrgyzstan has been trying for a year to make some amendments to the current agreement." Kyrgyzstan and Russia signed an agreement on labour migrants' activities and social protection in 1996, and the new protocol is to make some amendments to the current agreement, thereby facilitating the registration of labour migrants and contributing to their legalisation in the destination country - Russia. "These [amendments] include freeing the [Russian] employer from paying some insurance fees regarding the return of [Kyrgyz] labour migrants," Kravtsov said, adding that every employer in Russia was compelled to pay a guarantee fee for every hired labour migrant equal to the air flight ticket to his country of origin. There are no official statistics on the number of Kyrgyz labour migrants in foreign countries, but according to some estimates the number of Kyrgyz labour migrants in Russia ranges from 300,000 to 500,000 depending on seasonal factors: it increases during the construction season and falls with the onset of winter. "We cannot provide employment for everyone [in the country] and therefore Russia is in a way a safety-valve [by absorbing workers who would otherwise be unemployed]," Kravtsov noted, adding that if those 300,000 labour migrants were to leave Russia and return to Kyrgyzstan it could exacerbate the already strained situation affecting the labour market in their home country. According to the IOM mission in Bishkek, the main cause of labour migration from Kyrgyzstan to Russia is the lack of employment opportunities at home. Moreover, some respondents told IOM that the salary they were getting in Kyrgyzstan was insufficient to get by on, thereby indicating that the roots of the phenomenon were mainly economic. Kravtsov also said that the new protocol contained some provisions relating to Kyrgyz vendors working in Russia. Under existing Russian law they must register as private entrepreneurs, but only those having residency permits were registered as such, he added, noting that generally labour migrants did not have such a permit, which was very difficult to obtain. "The protocol foresees that registration of vendors as individual entrepreneurs without establishing a legal personal entity will be effected without regard to the duration of the vendor's stay," Kravtsov said, noting that in this way a labour migrant would not need to have lived in Russia for five years before being entitled to register as a private entrepreneur. Moreover, under the new terms, a vendor would be able to register and work in markets freely without being obliged to obtain a residency permit, Kravtsov explained, noting that this would greatly facilitate the lives of Kyrgyz labour migrants in some big Russian cities. Under Russian law a foreign citizen can get a contract for one year, but the protocol provides that a Kyrgyz national can work for two years with the option of extending his contract for another year. "On average, an employer can save some US $250 on each [Kyrgyz] labour migrant," Kravtsov noted. Commenting on the magnitude of who whole issue of migration, Moldobayeva said every labour migrant had on average four to five dependants in Kyrgyzstan, thereby indicating that the 300,000 or so migrants in Russia were supporting 1.2 million of the impoverished nation's population of about 5 million. Kyrgyzstan was so far the only country of the Commonwealth of Independent States to have received such preferential treatment from Russia, Kravtsov said. However, the protocol has yet to be ratified by the Russian parliament.