DUSHANBE, September 23, 2009, Asia-Plus — Over the first eight months of this year, the representative office of the Tajik Interior Ministry migration service in Moscow has received 411 applications from Tajik labor migrants working in the Russia Federation and 106 of them concerned the problem of nonpayment of wages by employers, Ms. Dilbar Khojayeva, a spokeswoman for the representative office, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to her, Russian employers now owe more than 30 million Russian rubles (RR) to Tajik labor migrants.
“For example, 40 our fellow-countrymen worked at the site for construction of a facility for the firm RODEX-Design from 2007 to 2008 and they have not yet received 1.7 million rubles for their work,” said Khojayeva, “29 other Tajiks worked for the Moscow construction firm ArkhProekt from 2007 to 2008 and the company has not yet paid their wages in the total amount of 955,000 rubles.”
In the meantime, the chief of the Interior Ministry migration service’s office in Moscow Abdurahim Rahimov notes many Tajik labor migrants have worked in Russia illegally, and therefore, prosecutor’s offices in Russia do not consider their applications because they do not have appropriate employment contracts.
He added that existing sustainable migration barriers continued to have negative impact on labor migrants from Tajikistan undermining their image and status. “After getting 3-month work permit at territorial bodies of Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS), labor migrants practically cannot extend the permit term up to one year because employers mainly accept labor migrants for work without concluding appropriate labor contracts with them,” Rahimov said.
According to the FMS data, some 300,000 Tajik migrants have worked in the Russian Federation over the first six months of them; more than 123,000 of them have worked in the construction sector, 42,300 in the trade sector, more than 13,000 in the agrarian sector; 17,800 in the transport and communications sector, 16,700 in the sphere of public services, 481 in the education sector and 724 in the health sector.
