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(Bloomberg) – Thousands of Central Asian migrant workers are stranded in Russia because of bans, leading some to have cash from their homes in a painful reversal of one of the world’s largest remittances.
“We are indebted to our ears,” said Tolib, an unemployed 26-year-old security guard, who in his fourth failed attempt to wait for outdoor data from The Tajikistan Embassy in Moscow’s exclusive Patriarchs neighborhood. “We have to pay rent, food and travel, and we have nothing to live for.”
Workers have been stranded without paintings in Russia since the Kremlin closed borders in March due to the pandemic. Many are running out of cash after a global economic crisis that has undermined the call for jobs in the structure and facilities sectors, occupied by some 4.4 million migrants.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which have cash returned through Russia for more than a third of the annual gross domestic product, have been two of the largest hit by a remittance crisis that hit the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. A World Bank survey in May found that more than 40% of families in Tajikistan have reduced their food intake accordingly, while Kyrgyzstan receives emergency investments from the International Monetary Fund.
Before the pandemic, Tolib sent more than part of his $500 monthly salary to his mother and two siblings in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, and took the rest to pay awning rent, administrative prices and food. After wasting his homework in March, his circle of relatives had to fire him for $200, but it lasted only a month.
Russia has taken longer to restart foreign flights than other major destinations for foreign personnel, such as the United States and Germany. The Tajikistan embassy began repatriation flights in June, but temporarily suspended the waiting list in July after thousands of others asked to return home, according to its website.
Residents of other former Soviet republics also encountered difficulties. Some 400 Azeris clashed with police in southern Russia as they tried to cross the closed border, and an Uzbek staff organization set up makeshift camps near the border with Kazakhstan as they waited to return home, local media reported.
The World Bank has estimated that the amount returned to the world through migrants will fall by 20% this year, the biggest drop in recent history. Europe and Central Asia will be the most affected, according to research.
“Before, immigrants sent cash here, but now their relatives and they have to send cash to Russia,” said Ikbol Isakov, who runs the NGO Public Foundation Progress in southern Kyrgyzstan.
Migrant staff usually send about $13 billion home each year from Russia, whose population is declining and allows most citizens of the former Soviet Union to paint without a visa. Three-quarters of foreign staff lost their jobs or were absent without pay for the coronavirus closures in April and May, according to a survey conducted through Evgeni Varshaver at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
International transfers from Russia fell by 35% in May and June to it a year ago, according to Unistream, a popular payment provider among Central Asian migrants.
Money doesn’t go home: $690 billion moving risk
Russia’s cash flows accounted for about one-third of gross domestic product in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in 2018. Kyrgyzstan’s economy could contract by 4% this year, according to the IMF’s Forecasts april, while Tajikistan’s GDP is expected to grow by 1%. , compared to 7.5 per cent in 2019.
“These other people are being held hostage” in this scenario, said Gulnara Bobodjanova, a lawyer working at the Charity Civic Assistance in Moscow. “The only way out of this scenario is to open the border, if only in one direction, so that other people who wish to leave can do so.”
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