Chisinau proposes to set up CIS Coordination Council for migration

Moldavia proposes to set up a CIS Coordination Council for regulating migration processes, said the head of Moldavia's national migration service Valery Muntyanu when speaking about Moldavia's initiative in his exclusive interview with RIA Novosti.

This step has been initiated by the necessity to develop a scheme of the CIS member-countries' cooperation in terms of combating illegal migration, Muntyanu pointed out. Today a few illegal transit routes are stretching through Moldovan territory alone, he said. Moreover, Moldavia itself has serious problems with labour migration because every third able-bodied person from Moldavia is currently working abroad.

Muntyanu pointed to the fact that "as the zone of the Schengen visa was coming closer to Moldavia's borders /Rumania is supposed to join Schengen on the 1st of January 2003/, the pressure on illegal migration is becoming more intensive while methods of combating it remain outdated." Muntyanu believes that the Coordination Council will help solve problems of people leaving the CIS on legal terms but seeking illegal employment.

"Out of 200,000 Moldovan labour migrants, almost all of them are illegally employed in Russia," Muntyanu stated.

"We suggested that Russia should give us an annual quota for 50,000 people and moreover asked the Russian side to declare a three-month moratorium for letting Moldovan migrants residing in Russia legalize their stay in the country," he said.

Muntyanu also said that at the Chisinau summit scheduled for October 7, the CIS leaders would discuss an issue of labour migrants' social provision in the framework of the CIS.