KHOROG, February 19, 2009, Asia-Plus — Since last May, information center for labor migrants at the Khorog-based Civil Society Support Center, Kalam, has provided consultations to more than 800 labor migrants, including 260 women, to raise their legal awareness level, Nazarbek Mamadnazarov, a lawyer with Kalam, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to him, many employers in Russia refused to pay wages to labor migrants lately, pleading the global financial crisis.
“We have contacts with a number of human rights organizations in Russia and the center helps our labor migrants solve problems facing them,” said Mamadnazarov, “Unfortunately, many of labor migrants have not been given contracts, as required by Russian law. In this case, it is very difficult to help them, because the lack of a contract makes workers vulnerable to wage and other abuses and limits their opportunities to seek assistance from official bodies in cases of abuse.”
Many people also apply to the center for consultations on how to get wok permit, how to be registered, etc.
According to the GBAO agency for employment, migration and social protection of the population, more than 24,000 residents of Gorno Badakhshan, or 12 percent of the region’s population, have left the country to other CIS states, primarily Russia, seeking better employment opportunities. Labor migrants remitted more than 36 million US dollars to banks in the region last year.
