Kazakstan Will Need More Migrants

Kazakstan has said it needs about a million extra migrant workers to meet the needs of its growing economy, but NBCentralAsia experts say society is not ready to cope with such a huge influx, and the state should invest more in its domestic workforce.



During a roundtable on migration policy on June 11, Yury Shokmanov, an expert from the national statistics agency, said the country would need over a million extra workers if it is to achieve the government’s target of doubling the 2005’s gross domestic product figure by 2015.



Others at the discussion said Kazakstan’s migration policy is not in keeping with the pace of economic growth.



At an informal Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, summit in St Petersburg on June 10, President Nursultan Nazarbaev said the migration issue should be discussed since it is one of the most daunting problems facing the CIS states.



NBCentralAsia analysts agree that the current system for attracting migrant workers to Kazakstan is chaotic, and the state cannot cope with an extra million foreigners.



There is an official quota for migrant workers, set at 0.8 per cent of Kazakstan’s eight million able-bodied adults. The total population is just over 15 million.



NBCentralAsia analyst Yaroslav Razumov agrees that the state needs to attract more semi-skilled workers as well as highly qualified professionals, but it does not have the capacity to absorb such a large number of migrants.



“Recruiting a qualified workforce en masse is absolutely necessary. But the state is unlikely to be ready to actually recruit, control and provide security for such a large number of foreign professionals and workers,” he said.



Observers believe most of the million migrant workers would come from neigbouring Central Asian countries, China, and to a lesser extent Russia. Kazakstan not only needs to be prepared for them entering the economy, it also has to be deal with the social and political implications.



“Mass migration will drastically change the ethnic-political map. To be prepared for this, both society and its political structures have to be very robust,” said political scientist Seydakhmet Kuttykadam.



He believes the need for foreign workers has been created not so much by economic growth as by the government’s failure to implement consistent recruitment and education policies within Kazakstan.



Political scientist Berik Abdugaliev agrees that the state should invest more in training its own professionals.



“An innovations-based economy is now taking shape, but unfortunately there aren’t enough trained professionals for it,” he said. “The economy is moving ahead but they can’t train enough personnel to keep up. The education system is not meeting current needs.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)