Government Tightens Controls on Migrants
Tuesday, 29 May, 2007
Government Tightens Controls on Migrants
Tuesday, 29 May, 2007
A government decree will increase the amount of information the state has about its citizens who go abroad in search of employment, the Interfax reported on May 18. Uzbek nationals planning to leave the country to work abroad will have to fill in a revised form which now asks for details of their future job and whereabouts.
The government’s statistical agency and the customs committee have been instructed to issue quarterly reports on the number of people moving abroad and their reasons for leaving, while the country’s foreign consulates will monitor their movements through consular bodies.
The decree also reduces the fee for the permit the Uzbek authorities issue for working abroad, and makes it easier to get one.
According to NBCentralAsia sources in Uzbekistan, most of the people who pay for the 40 US dollars permit go off to work legally in non-neighbouring countries like South Korea. Uzbeks who go to Russia or Kazakstan usually leave the country illegally and do not go through the complicated permit procedure.
According to various estimates, there are around three million Uzbek migrant workers, most of them in Russia.
Political scientist Bakhtyor Isabek hopes that by learning more about its citizens abroad, the Uzbek government will be in a better position to protect their rights through formal agreements with the authorities in host countries.
“This does not imply responsibility for what happens to migrant workers, but at the same time the government wants to know where they work,” he said.
However, Isabek believes the real reason why the government has introduced new methods of registering migrants is to allow it to raise more revenue from them.
“I think the government’s real aim is primarily economic, and has to to with the fact that the incomes of these citizens are invisible,” he said.
Iskandar Khudoiberganov, a former head of the Democratic Initiative Centre in Tashkent, believes many migrants would revoke their citizenship if the Uzbek government started demanding taxes.
Better information on migrants will give the government greater political control over them when they are abroad, he said, adding, “We are talking about a totalitarian system which exerts absolute control, and where even the mahallah [neighbourhood] committee knows who to catch, not to mention the official agencies.”
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
