Little work and paltry salaries: Turkmen seek their fortune abroad

No longer just young people, civil servants over 45 are also emigrating. Turkey, Russia and the United Arab Emirates are the preferred destinations. There could be a million emigrants from Turkmenistan. To work at home they are forced to pay bribes, just like to escape to other countries.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Between 1 March and 10 April there was a peak in the emigration of Turkmen citizens, mainly public administration employees, both in offices and factories, who quit their jobs to seek their fortune elsewhere.

 Radio Azatlyk reports under the conditions of high unemployment in Turkmenistan, which is not recognised by official statistics, previously mostly citizens without jobs migrated, but the economic crisis is so deep that the meagre salaries are driving even the employed to leave.

The Ministry of Labour and Social Defence in Ašgabat does not publish figures on the real employment situation in the country, let alone on the level of poverty among the population. Employees in public education and health facilities are also leaving, and even more intense exoduses are expected next summer. The state migration service also refuses to comment on this situation.

Before the pandemic, which is also not officially recognised in Turkmenistan, labour migration mainly concerned younger people, but the new wave seems to involve many men over the age of 45 who receive state salaries. In past years, the first destination of the flight was Turkey, when no entry visa was needed for this country, whereas now entry has been restricted, and people are rather oriented towards Russia or the United Arab Emirates.

Turkey has suspended the free-entry regime for Turkmen since September 2022, and today it takes at least three months to obtain a visa, but the number of migrants to Ankara and Istanbul remains high. The most popular Russian regions are the Tatars of Kazan, Rostov on the Black Sea or Novosibirsk in the centre of Siberia, while work in Dubai remains one of the most desired targets.

The Russian war in Ukraine opens up new possibilities for Central Asian labour migrants, as the large-scale mobilisation of the war, and heavy losses in combat, are creating major problems for Russia in finding labour. People emigrate to support their families, to allow their children to marry, to build or buy a house, or to allow their children access to higher education. At home, on the other hand, in order to get a job one has to pay heavy bribes, only to receive very low wages.

The indirect response to this emergency comes from the great publicity, disseminated by the state media, of the new Turkmen 'labour cadre aggregation' agencies, which offer help in looking for work. Turkey's emigration agency has calculated that there are currently 222,000 Turkmenistan nationals living in the country, but the real figure seems very close to one million.

During the period of the pandemic, all international flights from Turkmenistan had been suspended for more than two years, but after the end of the restrictions, the rush for plane tickets causes endless queues at ticket offices, equal to those in front of municipal offices to obtain biometric passports, for which it takes at least three months to wait, as for entry visas to Turkey.

The queues are reminiscent of those of Soviet times: a family member goes to the office at 6 a.m. to get the 'talon', the ticket to queue up at 9 a.m. to submit the application, and from the afternoon onwards, the queue forms to obtain the longed-for document. And at each stage, an offer is left with the officials; to skip all the queues, the bribe starts at 0, but can even exceed ,000, by approaching the airport managers directly. Then all it takes is a phone call from the airport to the respective local offices, and as if by magic, the gates of paradise open for the Turkmen.

Photo: Flickr/City