EYEWITNESS: CHRISTIAN LOWE IN MOSCOW
The Scotsman
16 January 2009
UNTIL the financial crisis hit, Shahin Kerimov sent money home from
his job in Russia to his family in Azerbaijan. Now his wages have
stopped, they have to wire him cash to buy food.
Kerimov worked a tough, dirty job building blocks of flats in
Moscow so he could make a better life for his wife and children. His
employer promises to pay him what he is owed soon. "I have two small
children. They are waiting so I can earn some kind of money and
bring it home," he said in the bare-walled flat, where he and his
workmates are squatting. "The last time we were paid any money was
two months ago."
His experience illustrates how the pain of the global slowdown
has spread beyond the world’s economic powerhouses into developing
countries far removed from the financial markets and hedge funds
where the crisis first emerged.
Kerimov is one of an estimated ten million migrants from former
Soviet republics working in Russia. The cash they send to family is
a lifeline for the economies of their home countries, in some cases
accounting for nearly half of gross domestic product. So when workers
are laid off from construction sites or factories in Moscow, the
economic effects are felt thousands of kilometres away in households
in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and elsewhere.
Russia hosts the world’s second-largest number of migrants, after
the United States – and it is a hard life. Many do not have proper
work permits and are regularly rounded up by police. The majority
are dark-skinned Muslims, sometimes making them targets for attacks
by gangs of racist skinheads.
Until now, the money made it worthwhile. Many of the migrants went
into construction: buildings were going up everywhere and labour
was in short supply. Since the financial crisis froze credit lines,
that work has almost ground to a standstill.
In the wider economy, the global crisis has hit demand for Russia’s
commodity exports and left companies strapped for cash and cutting
jobs. Rouble depreciations have pushed up the costs of refinancing
foreign currency debt. The man who employed Kerimov said he would
pay him and his colleagues the wages they are owed, but is struggling
because the whole sector has ground to a halt.
"Everyone is holding money up… everyone is on the alert," said
Valery Tishchenko. "You don’t know which way to turn."
While they wait for the cash they are owed, Kerimov and about
five workmates from all corners of the old Soviet Union live in
a second-floor flat in the complex they had been building, in the
Moscow suburb of Lyubertsy.
They sleep on beds nailed together out of spare pieces of wood,
with polystyrene insulating slabs as mattresses. Heat comes from a
scavenged electric stove they hooked up to a wire poking out of the
wall. There is no plumbing, so they fill buckets with cold water from
a tap outside and wash in an alcove.
"We live by taking out loans, or sometimes a friend will help,"
said Kerimov, as he watched a meal of onions and tomatoes cook on
the makeshift stove. "Sometimes I even have to ring home and ask my
parents to help."
He said returning home was not an option. In Azerbaijan unemployment
is high and the average monthly wage is a little over £200 – less
than half the figure in Russia.
"We will wait until the end, until they pay the money," Kerimov said.
"Something has to be done."
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