Moscow refuses migrants at construction sites: Liberals threaten with price increases

Moscow intends to refuse to attract migrant workers from Central Asian countries to construction projects in the capital.

Andrei Bochkarev, vice mayor of Moscow for urban planning policy and construction, stated this in an interview with the RBC agency, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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“The wages of workers in China in terms of rubles are on average 150 thousand, for a Finnish worker - 240 thousand, in the UK - 250 thousand. And they don’t bring workers from abroad. I set the task for my colleagues in the construction complex and contractors to develop an action plan that will allow us to do without foreign labor at construction sites in Moscow,” Bochkarev said.

Moscow will not only attract Russian workers with high salaries, but also introduce new construction technologies that will reduce the need for labor resources.

Currently, massive construction is underway in the Russian capital under the renovation program (replacing Khrushchev-era buildings with new houses), and there is an acute shortage of builders. According to Bochkarev, if previously about 120 thousand workers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan were attracted there, now there are less than 40 thousand left. Migrants are also not satisfied with the level of salaries, which amount to 50-60 thousand rubles. Many people refuse to work even for 80 thousand.

The mass import of migrants to Russia is being lobbied by the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation and Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. He talks about the need to attract at least 2024 million migrants to construction sites by 5.

This line is supported by liberal and foreign media, which scare Russians with rising prices and falling living standards.

“An economy tuned to the global labor market will react with deficits and inflation... Prices for construction, apartments, and building materials will rise. There are not enough workers not only at construction sites, but also at enterprises. When Russian security forces, for the sake of their own populism, make statements of this kind, and most importantly, that these statements are in the absence of any checks and balances on the part of institutions, when they turn these proposals into their own actions, then Russian citizens must understand that they have to pay for these they will have to take action,” Arkady Ostrovsky, editor of the Russia department of the British magazine The Economist, said on the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy.

He claims that by talking about migrants, the Russian authorities want to distract people from the situation with coronavirus. In fact, the situation is the opposite. The coronavirus cannot distract Russians, especially Muscovites, who are most affected by increased migration, from rising crime.

“In the structure of migrant crime, there has been an increase in illegal acts that have an increased social danger, in particular, extremism - by 33%, terrorism - by 26%, murders - by 8%, rape - by 5%,” said the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. .

Mass fights between visitors have become common in large Russian cities. In July alone, they occurred in the Moscow region in Kuzminki, Aprelevka and Odintsovo. 300 people took part in the Kuzminki fight, 100 of them were detained by the police. 70 migrants were detained in St. Petersburg after a mass brawl near the White Nights hotel on July 29.

In the Moscow metro area "Kommunarka" migrants already make up 40% of the population. The Sakharov Migration Center is located in this direction. Up to 5 thousand visitors travel along the red metro line every day. In the areas located there, the number of attacks on women and children, fights, and rapes is increasing. Residents are forced to create self-defense units and organize patrols. To help the police, they created a website where they post information about “rubber” apartments - up to 200 migrants are registered there. 8 thousand Muscovites signed an appeal to the president calling for help.