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EURASIA INSIGHT

TAJIKISTAN: LABOR MIGRANTS FACING GRIM CHOICES
Nadira Artyk 7/31/09

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, in Tajikistan for a two-day stay that concluded July 31, touched on a variety of security and energy issues in his discussions with his Tajik counterpart, Imomali Rahmon. But perhaps the most important issue on Tajikistan’s political and economic agenda -- labor migration -- did not figure prominently in bilateral talks.

Tajikistan in recent months has been buried by an avalanche of bad economic news. One of the more serious aspects of the Central Asian nation’s current plight is the drastic fall-off in the value of remittances sent home by labor migrants. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Watchdog groups, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), have been chronicling the hardships experienced by labor migrants in Russia. Siarkhon Tabarov’s story is unfortunately a typical one told by Tajik migrant workers there. Tabarov told Human Rights Watch researchers recently that he saw a television commercial in his native Tajikistan advertising work in Russia. One month later, having signed with the employment agency, he was flown to Rostov, Russia with 33 countrymen. There his passport was taken and he was forced to dig stones from a quarry using hand tools and sleep on a soiled mattress in an abandoned refrigerator truck without any nearby source of clean water. To top it off, after 85 days of work, he was never paid.

Russia has the second-largest migrant worker population in the world after the United States, according to the World Bank. It is believed to host some 4 to 9 million migrant workers, with a large percentage engaged in the construction industry. The country’s domestic construction boom in recent years -- fuelled by high energy prices -- was made possible by millions of these workers. HRW estimates that 80 percent of these workers are from CIS countries. The majority are from Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The relationship works well generally for CIS countries -- the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that about 50 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP in 2008 was connected to remittances sent home by migrant workers. Kyrgyzstan’s GDP is 30 percent remittance-based, and Uzbekistan’s is just under 20 percent.

But the global economic crisis continues to punish Russia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. A credit crunch hit small businesses especially hard, and caused a rapid contraction of the construction sector. Those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder -- labor migrants -- have been among those hurt most by the economic decline.

A report released earlier this year by HRW called "Are You Happy to Cheat Us?" cataloged the abuse in Russia of 146 migrant construction workers from Central Asia. It chronicled stories like Tabarov’s, in which Tajik workers were trafficked, trapped, and not released until his family contacted a Tajik national organization to investigate. The situations reported by other citizens of CIS nations were not all so dire, but still far from just, with many workers being paid significantly less than promised, and often subjected to police extortion. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The report called on the Russian government to enforce rules the nation already has in place and to adhere to international human rights law in protecting all who live in its borders. Specifically, to "prevent, punish, investigate, and redress the harm caused to individuals’ rights and provide effective remedies to those so harmed." Now with the Russian economy in shambles, and so many citizens out of work, rigorous protection of the rights of migrant workers may be vital.

Michael Hall, Regional Director for The Caucasus and Central Asia at the Open Society Institute discussed the challenges facing labor migrants at a recent public forum held in New York. He said the remittances were flowing back to Tajikistan and Tajiks were still going abroad to work. The big difference is the drop in the amount sent. Bank officials report that the value of the transactions in February 2009 was reportedly 20 percent less than it was in February 2008.

"People seem to be staying but earning less than before," said Hall. "The scenario of hundreds of thousands of people flooding back into Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan is not happening yet." He said there are some anecdotal accounts of planes, trains and buses being less packed than before, but they are hard to verify. [Editor’s Note: EurasiaNet operates under the auspices of the Open Society Institute].

"There is an intriguing lack of concern among Tajik government officials about the possibility of a large number of labor migrants coming back from Russia," Hall added. With the new focus on Afghanistan by the US administration, there seems to be a growing confidence in Tajikistan that international aid will be forthcoming and that Tajikistan will not be left alone, if the social situation deteriorates.

A Russian economic recovery is not projected to begin until late 2010 at the earliest, according to Richard Ericson, a professor of economics at East Carolina University. The months ahead will tell if the labor market is flexible enough to survive the crisis.

Home economies are expected to stagnate in 2009, according to IMF figures released in May. The situation in Tajikistan is projected to be so tenuous that President Rahmon has urged his compatriots to stockpile essential food items. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Labor migrants thus will be mulling unpleasant options in the coming months.

Editor's Note: Nadira Artyk is a freelance journalist based in New York.