Aliaksandr Jarashuk: Asians will replace Belarusans at their working places

The emigration of Belarusans and their substitution with expatriate Asians is a developing trend.

On April 2 the House of Representatives ratified the Belarus-Tajikistan agreement on temporal working activity of Belarusian citizens in Tajikistan and Tajikistani citizens in Belarus. The document will touch on the mutual immigration regulation, as well as stay and departure, the issues of social security, retirement plan, working conditions, payments and labor protection.

Aliaksandr Jarashuk, the head of Belarusan Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BCDTU), commented on the ratification of the document to the EuroBelarus Information Service.

- Are the concerns about the transformation of Belarus into an Asian state grounded?

- The problem is that the Belarusan regime lacks a country’s development strategy. In Belarus citizens can’t fulfill themselves in all the economic spheres. Tough authoritarian regime and command economy make many Belarusans leave the country due to political and economic reasons. Thus, scarcity of labor becomes a problem, and the authorities have nothing else to do than to employ Asian expatriates.

Without adequate responsible economic policy it is impossible to regulate the employment problems in a civilized way.

- What will be the results of the Asian “invasion” to Belarus?

- The number of citizens of the Central Asian countries, China, Vietnam hasn’t reached its critical level yet. However, the tendency is very alarming. Belarusan authorities are not aimed at changing their political course and are unwilling to change the command economy, which means that the alarming migration processes will only be building up.

- How many Belarusans are working abroad?

- According to different statistical data, from 300 thousand up to 1 million Belarusans are working abroad.

Official statistics published in Russia recently says that about 400 thousand Belarusans are working there. But we can only guess how many citizens are staying in Russia illegally.

Mikhail Miasnikovich said recently that about 435 thousand citizens are unoccupied in our country’s economy – these are potential emigrants.

We don’t know the exact figures – statistics hides the real scale of the national disaster. However, we can say the considerable part of Belarusans cannot fit in the sphere of Belarus’ labor relations.