Chechnya: The Jobless Horde

A hot summer afternoon in the market in central Grozny. In the baking heat, brown dust settles on passers-by. About 40 people are gathered in a small square, the men either standing or squatting, the women sitting on benches or sheltering from the sun under umbrellas. All are wearing working clothes, some have bags in their hands.

A car stops near the roadside and the bored crowd instantly livens up. “My kitchen needs tiling, ten square metres,” said the driver. A man emerges from the crowd and after a brief exchange, gets into the car. He has a job for the next two days, which will earn him between 1,000 and 1,500 roubles (around 35 to 50 dollars).

This unofficial day-labour market is just one symptom of Chechnya’s staggering unemployment problem, which has become a major issue in the republic’s forthcoming presidential election on August 29.

The issue is especially acute in the capital Grozny, which was once a major industrial city but has been devastated by conflict in 1994-96, and again in 1999-2000, the early phase of the more recent war.

“Over these years, the modest attempts to restore Chechnya basically didn’t touch the industrial sector,” said Alaudi Temirbayev, who used to run the development department in Chechnya’s industry ministry in the early Nineties. “We are faced with a horrifying picture: the oil refinery complex is completely destroyed; none of the enterprises has been restored apart from the brick and cement producing plants. Naturally, there is an acute lack of jobs that could be created if there was an increase in industrial production.”

Many of those suffering the heat at Grozny’s casual labour market are well-skilled and qualified.

Tamara, from the village of Starye Atagi, worked for more than ten years at a construction company, but now comes here looking for short-term employment. She said that none of her family of 13 people has a job.

Taus, a 47-year-old Grozny resident, who worked as an accountant for 22 years, says she is now in a “desperate position” and that none of her three children have jobs. She went to the local job centre but was only offered a job sweeping rubbish on the streets for 1,500 roubles (30 US dollars) a month. “On that money I wouldn’t be able to support my family of four as I’d have to spend the whole salary on travelling and food,” she said.

Magomed, a 48-year-old welder, agrees, “There are no jobs for our qualifications. Unemployment benefit is too small to support a family. It’s not worth queuing for 500-600 roubles a month”.

Two years ago, before he started coming to the labour market Magomed tried working for private companies, “I worked for a firm that eventually owed me 15,000 roubles and then shut down. The firm turned out to be bogus, and I and several workers were simply deceived. We went to court hoping to get our money but nothing came out of it.”

Magomed would like to start his own business, but said, “I need equipment but I don’t have money to buy it with.”

In Chechnya, according to official statistics, about one in ten people is unemployed – that makes 110,000 out of a population of one million. But this figure is clearly a gross underestimate.

Aslambek Timergerayev, press secretary of the ministry for education, told IWPR that every year 1,000 people leave Chechen educational institutions. “About 100 of them get jobs and the rest are unemployed. The republic doesn’t have jobs for them,” he said. In many instances, he said, the jobs they do get offered are worse paid than those on construction sites.

Political scientist Timur Muzayev believes the roots of the current jobless situation go back to the Eighties, when a decision was made to further industrialise what was then Chechen-Ingushetia at the expense of agriculture.

After former Chechen leader Jokhar Dudayev tried to proclaim independence, industrial production slumped and demand at Grozny’s oil refineries went down.

Unemployment peaked in Chechnya during the fighting of 1994-1996 and 1999-2002 when all businesses and factories were destroyed and looted. As a result, almost the entire industrial workforce lost their jobs.

Moscow’s favoured candidate for president of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov, has said he wants to see the republic get the status of a “free economic zone” until 2013 to boost reconstruction and employment. In Moscow on August 8, he said that he believed 76 per cent of the population was unemployed.

“Chechnya should decide be able to solve its own natural resource problems,” said Alkhanov. “It should have control of oil and gas extraction and refining, and the transport and the sale of oil and petrochemicals.”

Financial analyst Rashid Yunusov argues that it would be against Moscow’s political interests to allow the local Chechen authorities to have this amount of economic control.

“It’s profitable for the Kremlin when there is unemployment and destruction in Chechnya,” he said. “A republic that relies on subsidies and is on the ‘financial hook’ of the federal centre is easy to control.”

Timur Aliev is IWPR’s coordinator for Chechnya.