The recently appointed Minister of labor, Migration and employment of the Population, Ms. Gulnora Hasanzoda, yesterday gave a news conference on the results of work carried out by the ministry last year.
After opening remarks and a short report on the activities of the ministry in 2022, Hasanzoda asked journalists to list all the questions addressed to the ministry, but she answered not all the questions.
Thus, the new labor minister failed to answer the question about of number of Tajik nationals working abroad as labor migrants.
She just said that the exact figures will be given later. “Now these figures are being clarified together with Russian colleagues,” Hasanzoda added.
Meanwhile, statistics of labor migrants leaving the country, primarily for Russia, statistics have become a subject of controversy in the press. The thing is that the figures given by Tajikistan and Russia vary greatly.
Thus, between January and September 2021, Russia’s Interior Ministry registered 2,025,712 Tajik citizens entering the country – 1.6 million of them, or about one-quarter of Tajikistan’s working-age population, with work as their official purpose.
Meanwhile, in an address to a joint meeting of both chambers of parliament, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon noted on December 26, 2019 that compared to 2010 the number of Tajik nationals seeking better employment opportunities abroad has decreased by 60 percent.
“In 2010, 1.1 million Tajik nationals went abroad seeking better employment opportunities. This year, this figure has been only 486,000 people,” Rahmon noted.
Labor migrants are still a critical component in the economy of Tajikistan and remittances keep many struggling families in the country above the poverty.
