Along the perimeter of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border over ten spontaneous labor stock-exchanges have been functioning, as the authorities of Kyrgyzstan assert. As a rule, job is searched by the citizens of Uzbekistan. When the representatives of local authorities appear, they escape at once: illegal hire of foreign labor force is chastised by the law in Kyrgyzstan.
Exclusively cheap labor force from neighboring Uzbekistan flooded the southern rayons of Kyrgyzstan sustaining a surplus of labor resources without it. The situation entailed intensified friction between the unemployed. The ranks of the army of "excessive" people have been accreting. Measures are taken to protect inward labor market. In Osh province according to the data of the regional managerial office on migration the number of demanded laboring migrants is about three hundred. An employer should get a respective permit of local authorities, to deposit a certain payment for labor force hire, to make deductions in favor of the social fund. Hereby, an employer and an employee should present a heap of official papers. According to the data of local NGOs there must be ten and a half of documents. In a ward, it is unprofitable to draw in Gastarbeiter in an official way.
As local rural boards assert, in bordering areas of Kyrgyzstan 4-5 thousand of Uzbekistan citizens are engaged in seasonal or occasional job. As a rule, these are indigent people from densely populated villages. Then working day costs only 30-35 Kyrgyz soms (about 0.7-0.8 USA dollar) for a job-giver.
"We do everything we are ordered", - tells 30 years old Makhfirat from Bulak-Bashi area of Uzbekistan. - In summer we weed cotton and tobacco, in autumn harvest them. In winter we do about the house. We work having no free minute, but we are glad even of it".
Meanwhile human rights advocacy organizations of southern Kyrgyzstan express disturbance with the position of illegal farm-laborers. No guarantees are ensured for them. Employers using them as a cheap labor-force have practically no obligations before them. And before the state either, one should say. In the outcome a migrant has no rights at all.
"Farm-laborers from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan don't move beyond the boundaries of their working-places being afraid of militia, diverse sorts of racketeers", - tells Abdimalik Sharipov, employee of "Justice" non-governmental organization. - They have to constantly endure insults. Not infrequently they are merely swindled by employers".
"We are ready to work on a legal basis. The countries should agree on simplified hire conditions. You may be hired only for a week, but you are demanded a heap of certificates", - says Ghayrat Abdulloyev from Andijahn viloyat.
"The obstacles on the main way of traditional labor force exchange should be reduced to minimum", - considers Toktogul Toktomatov, agriculturist known in the region. There shaped a chain: our people head for more propitious Kazakhstan and Russia and we have the surplus of labor force from the neighboring countries. So, the powers should regulate this process".
Recently Bishkek and Astana signed an intergovernmental agreement "On Laboring Activity and Social Protection of Sojourners Engaged in Agricultural Jobs in Bordering Areas". In particular, Kyrgyz migrants in Kazakhstan are under the tutelage of the big private agency which places people in jobs. But as for official Tashkent and Dushanbe, Kyrgyzstan has no similar agreements with them.
"We would like to regulate the process of bordering migration with the same Uzbekistan, but all the undertaking doesn't shift from a dead point and it doesn't depend on us", - says Kaniza Iyazaliyeva, chief of the section of outward laboring migration under the Department of migration service attached to MFA. - Local analysts presume that the situation is deteriorated by complete closure of Uzbekistan for a labor force from neighboring countries. A unilateral movement of labor force cause bewilderment with local population and the unemployed pouring into conflicts".
Herewith, official Tashkent tries to constrain illegal crossing of the frontier on the part of their citizens who are eager to earn a piece of bread through reinforced regime at checkpoints.
"But this is no way out of the situation", - considers Adylzhan Abidov, vice-president of the social amalgamation "Civic Initiatives Support Center". - But the problem should be solved on a government level".
In A. Abidov's opinion, it would be expedient to open an official labor stock-exchange on the border. "We studied the projects on outward migration. Hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyzstan citizens go to Russia and Kazakhstan in search of jobs", - says the coordinator of the international organization on migration Bermet Moldobayeva. - Now the question arises: who comes instead of them? Researches are expected to give answers to many questions associated with the nature of this phenomenon, its consequences, influence upon social-economic life".
In the opinion of local analysts, one should dispel the stereotypes shaped in social consciousness in reference to sojourners which picture them as those "encroaching upon strange bread". In the opinion of Kara-Soo journalist Mahamajan Urinbayev, the prejudiced attitude towards Gastarbeiter is formed by affected publications of press playing no last role. But namely the press ought to pay attention to the roots of the problem, the ways of bringing up a tolerant attitude towards the participants of the process of migration. Different points of view exist on that score. But people are unanimous in one thing: in the Ferghana Valley, the most densely populated region of Central Asia abounding in a great deal of acutest social-economic problems, a special approach towards the actual issue is needed; decisions should be weighty being though over thoroughly. One can't do only with prohibitive measures. How to preserve former contacts no in prejudice of the national labor market - that is the basic question. But for the time being an illegal stream of cheap labor force only enhances social tension in the region.