OREANDA-NEWS. On 27 August 2009 was announced, that a regular meeting of the working group on Migrant Worker Card, a labor migration social security project, has been held in the headquarters of SOGAZ Insurance Group in Moscow chaired by Executive Secretary of the SCO Business Council, Sergey Kanavsky and attended by representatives of Russian authorities (the Foreign Ministry, the Federal Migration Service, the Federal Security Service), Federal State Unitary Enterprise Russian Post, recruiting agency Headhunter Group of Companies, as well as a number of commercial banks representing Russia and the Kyrgyz Republic.

Participants in the project initiated by SOGAZ Insurance Group within the framework of a state-private partnership and aimed at legalization of labor migration in the territory of the SCO member-states used the meeting to summarize the project’s preparatory stage.

The Migrant Worker Card project is similar to Europe’s Blue Card and provides for setting-up a system to organize migration flows between the SCO member-states in legal forms acceptable to the parties concerned. Besides, this project will offer migrants a full range of legalization and employment assistance services such as banking, personal insurance and, of particular importance, pension guarantees. The first country to join Russia in the Migrant Worker Card project will be the Kyrgyz Republic.

The meeting participants noted that the system of migrant flows organization needs on-line labor market monitoring for open jobs to enable employers to recruit staff with required expertise, profession and qualification thus making the system really demanded by Russia’s economy. It will also cover the migrants who are already in the territory of the Russian Federation.

The meeting resulted in a resolution on the start of practical implementation of the Migrant Worker Card project. At the first stage a protected dynamic data base will be set-up containing full information on migrants, while a specialized agency fully responsible for migrants’ employment in the receiving country will be established in the Kyrgyz Republic.

The project is coordinated by SOGAZ Insurance Group.

Sergey Okhotnikov, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of SOGAZ Insurance Group, has commented on the meeting’s results saying that the Migrant Worker Card will make it possible to form a market of qualified job seekers from the SCO countries in Russia and to solve their social security problems. “In partnership with its Kyrgyz colleagues, SOGAZ will use insurance mechanisms and its own developed medical infrastructure to assume responsibility for migrant workers’ health protection”, reported Sergey Okhotnikov.