Labour migration continues to play key role

Labour migration continues to play a pivotal role in Tajikistan, a country grappling with crippling poverty and unemployment ever since independence in 1991 followed by five years of civil war. "Labour migration from Tajikistan is the key issue touching all spheres, including the political and economic," Muzafar Zaripov, a programme officer and focal point for labour migration for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in the capital, Dushanbe, told IRIN on Wednesday. "The most active part of [the] population are labour migrants working abroad." Over the past decade, Tajikistan has seen an upsurge in cross-border seasonal migration. Of the country's close to 7 million inhabitants, more than 620,000, or close to 10 percent, are labour migrants, with one in every four households reporting a member of the family as being a labour migrant. Citing official sources, Zaripov said about 350,000 labour migrants worked in Russia, noting, however, that unofficial estimates placed that figure closer to 1 million. "Today, labour migrants flow to mainly Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan," he said. Asked to account for the numbers, the IOM official attributed the main causes to a weak economic reform system, poverty, low salaries, unemployment, and increasing numbers of people capable of working. But despite the numbers, the challenge of dealing with such an outflow of people remains problematic. According to a recently released IOM study, entitled "Labour Migration from Tajikistan", the primary problem areas were legalisation and social and legal protection. The report included profiles of the different types of migrants, their motives for going abroad, their living conditions, the problems they face and the networks they establish, the legislative framework for the their integration in the host country, and the economic and social ramifications of labour migration. "The vast majority of Tajik labour migrants work irregularly in Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS], where they're vulnerable to exploitation and suffer considerable hardship," Igor Bosc, the IOM chief of mission in Dushanbe, said. But despite that, there were also considerable benefits. "Tajik migrant workers acquire new experiences, skills and contacts, and their remittances are crucial to the survival of many households in Tajikistan," he observed. According to the report, the labour migrants comprise unskilled and semiskilled labour, highly skilled specialists, traders, and substitute workers to replace Russians who migrate to the West. The study went on to say that Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan were the main receiving countries of Tajik migrants. The factors for targeting those countries included: common recent history, absence of visa requirements, the role of Russian as the lingua franca across the former Soviet Union, and the presence in those countries of relatives and friends. Whereas Uzbekistan had the highest number of migrants working in Russia, Zaripov was quick to point out that, given Tajikistan's much smaller population, it remained the largest source of labour migrants in Central Asia today. Citing official data, IOM noted in the study that 86 percent of the Tajik population lived below the poverty line; that 43.8 percent of respondents attributed the difficult economic situation and poverty in the country as the main reason for migrating, while the second reason given by those interviewed - 22.8 percent - was unemployment. Compounding the problem, over the past five years, the official unemployment rate had risen from 1.7 percent to 3.2 percent. Only three-quarters of those registered as unemployed received unemployment benefits, amounting to just US $1.50 per month. Moreover, as most of the unemployed were not registered, the World Bank had estimated the real scale of unemployment at about 30 percent, the study said. Meanwhile, the problem of unemployment was particularly difficult for young people and women, with more than 120,000 young people entering the job market annually. Most of those seeking work at employment centres or registering as unemployed were within the most active segment of the population. Nearly 52.5 percent of the total number of unemployed were aged between 18 and 29. Secondary school graduates made up the largest percentage (68.9 percent) of the unemployed, the report stated.