Belarusian employers to report on migrants

According to Alexander Lukashenko’s new decree, employers are required to monitor migrant workers in every possible way. Employers should even make sure that they do not violate the sanitary standards at their place of residence. Propagandists believe that the influx of foreign workers will encourage Belarusians themselves to work harder. And experts note that some provisions of the decree may provoke legal conflicts. The fact that the issue of migrants is very significant was once again witnessed by the president himself on Thursday, giving a farewell speech to the new appointees.

Alexander Lukashenko has made a number of appointments. However, at the very top of the extensive list, these were the movements of already known figures from step to step.

So, until recently, Natalia Petkevich, First Deputy of the Presidential Administration, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs. Vladimir Karanik, having been deputy Prime Minister for only two months, moved to the chair of the head of the Academy of Sciences. Vladimir Pertsov, who was just a deputy prime minister, Petkevich took over the vacant post. And Valery Vakulchik, who until recently held the position of Assistant to the President – Inspector for the Brest region, became the chief of Staff of the Council of Ministers. However, it is also significant, of course, that in 2012-2020 he headed the State Security Committee.

The president, as usual, greeted everyone. Natalia Petkevich, whose stylish outfits the opposition press likes to discuss, faces particularly serious challenges. “With your approaches and discipline, and your exactingness, I am sure that we will finally be able to solve not only the issues of producing normal films, but we do not understand, it turns out that we need a movie from all ideological components. Therefore, I am sure that not only cinema, culture, but also sports, healthcare, and education are very important,” Lukashenko addressed her with a somewhat intricate appeal.

But the president paid much more attention to explaining the tasks facing another group of Thursday’s appointees – five new chairmen of district executive committees, as well as a number of other local officials. Lukashenko focused them on solving the painful problem of lack of labor resources. For some time now, the government wants to solve it by attracting foreign citizens. “As in the whole world, except maybe in some Asian and African countries, we have a shortage of labor resources. Thank God, it’s not catastrophic yet. But we must not lead to disaster,” the president said. “Therefore, it was decided to attract labor resources, primarily from the former republics of the Soviet Union.”

But at the same time, the president called for maximum vigilance against this contingent. “If you violated the contract, you immediately sent information to the police. They take them to the center, and we deport them from here. They will be immediately evicted from Belarus,” the head of state promised.

Just the day before, he signed a decree “On increasing the role of employers in the field of external labor migration,” which demonstrates the serious concern of the authorities on this issue. An employer must conclude an employment contract with a migrant within 30 days from the date of his entry into the Republic of Belarus. At the same time, it is prohibited to temporarily transfer a foreign guest to another employer. The structures that hired the migrant must identify special persons who will monitor them, including visiting foreigners at their place of residence, in order to verify their compliance with sanitary standards and “rules for the use of residential premises.”

The employer must also arrange for an assessment of migrant workers’ knowledge of one of the official languages within the limits necessary for communication. Moreover, this must be done before concluding an employment contract with them.

So far, there have been very few labor migrants in Belarus. Therefore, the idea of the president to invite such people not only from the CIS countries, but even from Pakistan caused some concern among citizens. Moreover, other propagandists justify the usefulness of this idea in such a way that, perhaps, they can further aggravate it. For example, Igor Tur, a political commentator for ONT TV channel, suggested in his program “Propaganda” that foreign workers may turn out to be more hardworking than local ones, and asked such questions: “Wouldn’t it happen that 10 such specialists would take on half of the work of those who, according to the staffing table, should be 100 people?”, “Won’t the arrival of such specialists lead to an automatic and, let’s say, a little more fair consideration of the question: how many people are at the plant and what their real salary should be based on the work invested?”

But Leonid Sudalenko, an expert on labor law, asks other questions on one of the opposition Internet resources. “The first question. The temporary transfer of an immigrant worker to another employer is prohibited. This is inconsistent with the norms of the Labor Code, in particular with the right of the parties to change working conditions by agreement. In addition, the principle of freedom of labor and economic competition is being violated, as well as risks for law enforcement and the burden on the judicial system is increasing,” the expert notes.

And he continues: “The second question. The decree expands the scope of the employer’s responsibilities, from concluding contracts on time to monitoring living conditions and compliance with sanitary standards by migrants. But at the same time, there are no clear mechanisms for legal protection of the employer in case of unfair actions on the part of the migrant; the boundaries of responsibility for non-compliance with standards dependent on third parties are not defined (for example, denial of access to the migrant’s place of residence).”

But there is no doubt that the new chairmen of the district executive committees, inspired by the president’s instructions, will successfully cope with these and other related issues.