Tashkent hosted a meeting of the Senate Committee on Labor and Social Issues. The meeting heard the report from the Agency for External Labor Migration on the implementation of measures to ensure the legal status and social protection of Uzbek labor migrants.

According to the agency, today 1.7 million Uzbeks work abroad, mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan.

“The fact that more than 55 percent of the country’s population is youth and about 600,000 workers are entering the labor market per year, demonstrates the importance of this issue. Also, a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on May 21 this year put special emphasis on the problem of migrants, and the Uzbek-Russian forum “The rights of citizens of Uzbekistan in the Russian Federation: labor migrants and their families” held in Russia determined the importance of the issue of migration in the region,” the statement said.

During the event, it was reported that Uzbekistan ranks second after Russia in terms of labor resources among the EAEU member states and ranks first in the number of foreigners working in the Russian Federation.

At present, more than a dozen resolutions and decrees, regulatory legal acts governing external labor migration have already been adopted.

Deputies put forward a number of proposals to further improve the system of support for migrant workers, aimed at the legal solution of similar problems.

In order to ensure the rights and legitimate interests of migrant workers, the deputies raised the issue of expediting the adoption of the Law on External Labor Migration.