Uznews.net – The body of a resident of Khiva who could not find work at home but found his death abroad was taken to his home town on 27 May. A total of 58 labour migrants from Horezm Region have died in CIS countries since 2005.

At least 20 migrant workers from Uzbekistan die in Moscow and Moscow Region alone every year, Hayitboy Yakubov, the head of the Najot human rights group, told a seminar on migration and human trafficking, held in Tashkent on 28 May.

Government bodies dealing with migration and human trafficking refused to take part in the seminar, and the Centre for Studying Legal Problems was the only government body the representative of which attended it.

Instead of solving problems of Uzbek migrants abroad in general, an interdepartmental commission, set up at the Prosecutor-General’s Office, has been involved only in the prevention of the of trafficking of Uzbeks.

Under the law on the prevention of human trafficking, adopted in 2008, people charged with human trafficking are now sentenced to 12 years in prison in Uzbekistan.

Despite the law, hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks who seek employment abroad every year are potential victims of human trafficking, because of, experts say, their illegal stay in foreign countries and bad knowledge of law.

Migrants also face bribery, extortion and blackmailing by police, organised criminal groups and employers.

Labour migration expert Botyr Norboyev said that the government’s measures to fight human trafficking were not efficient because the authorities preferred not to admit the migration of not only low-skilled workers but also qualified specialists.

“I think the admission of the drain of qualified specialists and intelligentsia from Uzbekistan is a painful issue for authorities,” he said.

Gayrat Usmanov, an expert from the Centre for Studying Legal Problems, thinks the adoption of a law on migration will improve the situation in this sphere. However, lawyer Ruhiddin Kamilov argued that this law would be useless unless the government admitted the problem of unemployment in the country.

Suhrobjon Ismoilov, the head of the Expert Working Group, said because of the government’s denial of this problem there was no accurate unemployment statistics in Uzbekistan.

The Statistics Committee claims the unemployment rate is less than 2% in Uzbekistan, while the Labour and Social Protection Ministry puts the figure at 6% and the World Bank at 7%.

However, experts think that the accurate count of the jobless will not decrease the number of migrant workers because not only unemployed go abroad, but also those who want to earn more than they do at home.

“Whatever number of jobs is created, this will not change anything. The problem is in low wages,” Tashkent-based independent human rights activist Dilorom Ishakova believes.