Kyrgyz migrant worker Belek Asanbekov sits at the kitchen table of his cramped Moscow apartment, scrolling through pictures on his mobile phone of friends killed days earlier in a fire at work.
One of his seven flatmates, Gulbara Boobekova, a 45-year-old mother of two, was minutes away from finishing her 12-hour night shift at a Moscow printing warehouse last month when a faulty lamp set ablaze the four-story building, killing her and at least 13 other women from the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.
“I called Gulbara, no answer,” said Asanbekov, who worked at the printers for more than seven years.
“I called again, no answer,” he said.
Boobekova is one of the latest victims of lax workplace safety in Russian industries that rely on migrant labor, often from Central Asia, as employees cut corners to save money with little fear of official punishment.
For the millions of unskilled workers who come to Russia it is yet another hazard they face beyond the daily discrimination, low wages and bureaucratic red tape.
Authorities have pledged to probe the incident and punish those responsible for the blaze, the second major fire that has killed migrants in Moscow this year.
“This is negligence. This is a violation of the fire safety regulations outlined by Russian law,” said Maxim Reshetnikov, head of the Moscow Department for Economic Policy and Development.
“Given the magnitude of this tragedy, the [city’s] reaction will of course be harsh,” he said.
In January, at least 12 migrants from Central Asia, including three children, were killed when a fire at a sewing workshop caused its roof to collapse.
Russia’s prosecutor-general said the print warehouse, whose director turned himself in to authorities, had not been inspected for fire safety since 2012.
“They did not follow safety regulations,” said 50-year-old Baktygul Kaldybayeva, a former warehouse employee whose cousin’s wife died in the fire.
“Employers do not have to respect safety regulations where migrants work. Why waste money on that?” Kaldybayeva added.
HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS
The warehouse, which pays employees US$1.53 an hour, was popular among Moscow’s Kyrgyz because “it paid little, but honestly and on time,” unlike many other places where migrants work, Kaldybayeva said.
The salary of a warehouse worker is less than half of the average wage in Moscow.
Undeterred by low pay and hazardous work conditions, about 550,000 Kyrgyz nationals — or 9 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s total population — have moved to Russia to earn money to send home to their families.
Work in their impoverished homeland is rare and remittances from abroad accounted for more than 30 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP in 2014, according to the World Bank.
However, the absence of legal safeguards make migrants vulnerable to having their pay withheld or their labor rights violated, rights activists say.
“Employers use not only migrants’ unequal situation in comparison to Russian citizens, but also their lack of knowledge of the law,” said Varvara Tretyak of the Moscow-based Civic Assistance Committee, which provides assistance to refugees and migrant workers.
The committee said local Moscow courts last year made more than 58,000 rulings to expel migrants while “flagrantly violating the judicial procedure and other norms.”
“There are no guarantees at any time,” Tretyak said.
NO CHOICE
In addition to working in hazardous conditions and living in overcrowded rooms or makeshift facilities at their workplaces, migrants also face discrimination that makes them vulnerable to attacks, rights activists say.
Since January, at least 34 people have been injured and four killed in ethnically motivated hate crimes in Russia, according to the Sova Centre, a research group that studies xenophobia and nationalism in Russia.
Russia’s economic situation has also added to the migrants’ plight.
The ruble’s collapse on the back of Western sanctions and low oil prices coincided with the introduction of draconian migration regulations.
The measures, including a sharp increase in right-to-work fees amounting to 4,200 rubles (US$65) a month for migrants from certain ex-Soviet republics, led many Central Asian migrants to leave the country last year.
The new migration regulations are meant to stamp out an old system that was prone to corruption, protect Muscovites’ jobs and control the influx of migrants, Reshetnikov said.
In spite of all the difficulties, the Kyrgyz women who perished in the warehouse fire had no choice but to work in Russia, Kaldybayeva said.
“No matter the names they call us, no matter how we are humiliated, people will still come here to work,” she said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion