Post by radovic on Dec 10, 2007 12:14:05 GMT -5
Worth the Risk?
by Ljubica Grozdanovska
10 December 2007
Thousands of Macedonians are being hired to work in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they seek fast benefits despite safety and economic concerns.
KUMANOVO, Macedonia | Since 2002, Alexandr has been working as a cook for wages that are unimaginable in his home country, where nearly one in every three working-age people are jobless.
The 44-year-old Macedonian traded the familiarity and safety of home to work as a cook on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, a country still riven with violence six years after the Americans ousted the Taliban rulers.
“Usually, the working day lasts for around 12 hours, and I am paid around [3,400 euros] per month,” Alexandr says of his job while sitting next to his father during one of his trips home. “The working agreement is signed for a period of six months, but it can be expanded up to a year. During that time, we aren’t allowed to leave the base.”
“The working language is English,” he continues. “I don’t know the language much, but they hired me anyway. We live in tents, large tents suitable for eight men. … Once every three months we get 16 free days for a vacation.”
Alexandr – who asked that his real name not be used – is one of the thousands Kumanovo residents who annually leave their home, the second-largest city in Macedonia, in search of wealth in Afghanistan. He is also one of the few Macedonians willing to talk about the increasing number of the country’s citizens seeking employment in crisis or post-crisis regions.
Each year, more than 10,000 Macedonians travel to work in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other high-risk areas, according to sources at the companies who contract the workers. Thousands of other citizens also seek employment in Europe, North America, and Australia. Macedonia has an overall population of just more than 2 million.
Not all Macedonians serving in Afghanistan carry guns.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is unable to confirm the number of Macedonian crisis-zone workers, or the total number of citizens working outside the country. According to the International Monetary Fund, “Official figures for the number of Macedonians living abroad are outdated, dropped from the 2002 census as politically sensitive after the 2001 security crisis,” when government forces fought ethnic Albanian rebels. Based on numbers obtained from countries receiving migrants, however, it is possible that roughly 20 percent to 25 percent of Macedonians live abroad.
With the government exerting weak control over who leaves the country and under what terms, crisis-zone hiring is being conducted with little regard for Macedonian laws about mediating employment. Government officials have said there isn’t much they can do about the situation.
The majority of workers hired are between 35 and 55 years old and who are willing to trade the risks and separation from families to have jobs in a country with a 36-percent jobless rate. The contractors offer good money and steady employment.
TOO GOOD TO PASS UP
Several times a year, contracting companies, many of them based in the United States, visit Macedonian cities to conduct interviews for jobs in high-risk areas. They meet potential workers at candidate fairs in hotels in Skopje or Kumanovo. Sometimes they conduct interviews in applicants’ homes.
One of the main recruiters is Kellogg Brown and Root, or KBR, an engineering, construction, and services company and a major contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. It already has contacts within Macedonia because it provided contract services during the conflict in neighboring Kosovo.
KBR subsidiaries hire many non-Americans, mostly from poorer countries, to work in crisis regions. Many of the workers cook, clean, or conduct repairs at U.S. military bases. According to The Chicago Tribune, KBR reported in early 2006 that between 35,000 and 48,000 of these nationals were holding jobs in Iraq. Some KBR subsidiaries have been found in violation of human-trafficking laws and other statutes governing the flow of foreign workers.
Contractors like KBR that organize recruiting events in Macedonia mostly refuse to give statements or offer official data, such as the number of interested candidates who show up for the interviews. But numbers obtained from a candidate fair at the Holiday Inn in Skopje indicate that there were more than 30,000 applications for about 10,000 job positions.
Workers and sources at the hiring companies in Macedonia say salaries for the jobs range from 1,400 to 10,200 euros per month in a country where the average monthly wage is about 500 euros. The money can be hard to trace and tax because the recruiting companies bypass weakly enforced Macedonian laws. According to data from the National Bank of Macedonia, remittances reached 923 million euros in 2006, marking an increase of more than 100 million euros over the previous year. Similarly, remittances increased by more than 200 million euros between 2004 and 2005, after growing by just more than 10 million euros between 2003 and 2004.
If official statistics are incomplete and unreliable, Alexandr and others coming and going from the country know the source of Macedonia’s burgeoning remittances. After multiple trips already, Alexandr plans to return to Afghanistan in early 2008 for another paycheck.
He says his job with KBR was “an offer I couldn’t refuse. … Everyone that applies for such an employment must pass a health examination and a short training in Houston [Texas]. The ones that pass are immediately sent to their new job position by military airplane, while the ones that don’t are sent home.”
“When I entered the plane for Afghanistan I felt fear and anxiety for the first time,” he continues, noting, however, that the base where he works is far away from any conflict.
Inside the base, there are people with different professions: electricians, carpenters, plumbers, cooks, and mechanics. Many of them are from Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, and Bosnia.
Residents of Kumanovo, a city of just over 100,000 people, say the employers in high-risk areas don’t guarantee any insurance; they are not responsible if something happens to a worker.
“We pay for our life insurance. It costs [78 euros] per month,” Alexandr says. “We are inside the base all the time, and it’s forbidden to go outside from it. If you want to go out, it’s at your own risk.”
PROBLEMS DELIVERED IN CASH
Many Kumanovo residents say the drain of people from the city is causing economic problems. Although the money sent home has helped improve some people’s standard of living by pumping money into their personal accounts, inflation is also on the rise.
The people who are working abroad – most of whom are men – send home cash, which their families then spend. The remittances of “Afghanistan people,” as the workers are known, go toward new apartments, houses, and expensive cars. The result is an increase in rental rates and other commodity prices.
“We can’t buy apartments in Kumanovo anymore because in the past three to four years they became very, very expensive,” says Slavica, a woman from Kumanovo. “In the past, the value of apartment of 40 to 50 square meters was 15,000 euros. Now for this money I can buy an apartment of only 30 square meters.”
“Most of the apartments in newly built buildings are bought by workers in Afghanistan and Iraq,” she adds.
Representatives of real estate agencies in Kumanovo say they have noticed the trend, but they don’t want to discuss why it is happening for fear of losing well-off clients.
Katerina Spasovska, a lawyer from Kumanovo, said she is disappointed in the behavior of her fellow citizens who choose to work abroad and send money back. She is more upset, however, by their family members who spend the remittances to the detriment of the local economy.
“Many doctors, lawyers, [and] students from high schools went to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and many other crisis regions,” Spasovska says. “There’s a group of people [receiving remittances] who think that they can buy anything with money who are acting like Hollywood celebrities.”
She also stresses that the remittances are creating temporary and artificial divisions of social classes, between the haves and the have-nots. “Migration of Macedonians is a problem that we must think about very seriously,” Spasovska says.
The flow of workers to high-risk areas, however, seems unlikely to slow soon. Lured by offers of comparatively high salaries, interested candidates are willing to risk their safety to send money home, no matter its fluctuating effect on inflation rates. A taste of the good life after just a few weeks or months of work seems worth it.
But not even short-term wealth is guaranteed. In 2004, three Macedonians working in Iraq with the company Soufan Engineering, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, never made it home. Dalibor Lazerevski, Zoran Naskovski, and Dragan Markovik, all from Kumanovo, were kidnapped and killed by their captors.
by Ljubica Grozdanovska
10 December 2007
Thousands of Macedonians are being hired to work in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they seek fast benefits despite safety and economic concerns.
KUMANOVO, Macedonia | Since 2002, Alexandr has been working as a cook for wages that are unimaginable in his home country, where nearly one in every three working-age people are jobless.
The 44-year-old Macedonian traded the familiarity and safety of home to work as a cook on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, a country still riven with violence six years after the Americans ousted the Taliban rulers.
“Usually, the working day lasts for around 12 hours, and I am paid around [3,400 euros] per month,” Alexandr says of his job while sitting next to his father during one of his trips home. “The working agreement is signed for a period of six months, but it can be expanded up to a year. During that time, we aren’t allowed to leave the base.”
“The working language is English,” he continues. “I don’t know the language much, but they hired me anyway. We live in tents, large tents suitable for eight men. … Once every three months we get 16 free days for a vacation.”
Alexandr – who asked that his real name not be used – is one of the thousands Kumanovo residents who annually leave their home, the second-largest city in Macedonia, in search of wealth in Afghanistan. He is also one of the few Macedonians willing to talk about the increasing number of the country’s citizens seeking employment in crisis or post-crisis regions.
Each year, more than 10,000 Macedonians travel to work in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other high-risk areas, according to sources at the companies who contract the workers. Thousands of other citizens also seek employment in Europe, North America, and Australia. Macedonia has an overall population of just more than 2 million.
Not all Macedonians serving in Afghanistan carry guns.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is unable to confirm the number of Macedonian crisis-zone workers, or the total number of citizens working outside the country. According to the International Monetary Fund, “Official figures for the number of Macedonians living abroad are outdated, dropped from the 2002 census as politically sensitive after the 2001 security crisis,” when government forces fought ethnic Albanian rebels. Based on numbers obtained from countries receiving migrants, however, it is possible that roughly 20 percent to 25 percent of Macedonians live abroad.
With the government exerting weak control over who leaves the country and under what terms, crisis-zone hiring is being conducted with little regard for Macedonian laws about mediating employment. Government officials have said there isn’t much they can do about the situation.
The majority of workers hired are between 35 and 55 years old and who are willing to trade the risks and separation from families to have jobs in a country with a 36-percent jobless rate. The contractors offer good money and steady employment.
TOO GOOD TO PASS UP
Several times a year, contracting companies, many of them based in the United States, visit Macedonian cities to conduct interviews for jobs in high-risk areas. They meet potential workers at candidate fairs in hotels in Skopje or Kumanovo. Sometimes they conduct interviews in applicants’ homes.
One of the main recruiters is Kellogg Brown and Root, or KBR, an engineering, construction, and services company and a major contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. It already has contacts within Macedonia because it provided contract services during the conflict in neighboring Kosovo.
KBR subsidiaries hire many non-Americans, mostly from poorer countries, to work in crisis regions. Many of the workers cook, clean, or conduct repairs at U.S. military bases. According to The Chicago Tribune, KBR reported in early 2006 that between 35,000 and 48,000 of these nationals were holding jobs in Iraq. Some KBR subsidiaries have been found in violation of human-trafficking laws and other statutes governing the flow of foreign workers.
Contractors like KBR that organize recruiting events in Macedonia mostly refuse to give statements or offer official data, such as the number of interested candidates who show up for the interviews. But numbers obtained from a candidate fair at the Holiday Inn in Skopje indicate that there were more than 30,000 applications for about 10,000 job positions.
Workers and sources at the hiring companies in Macedonia say salaries for the jobs range from 1,400 to 10,200 euros per month in a country where the average monthly wage is about 500 euros. The money can be hard to trace and tax because the recruiting companies bypass weakly enforced Macedonian laws. According to data from the National Bank of Macedonia, remittances reached 923 million euros in 2006, marking an increase of more than 100 million euros over the previous year. Similarly, remittances increased by more than 200 million euros between 2004 and 2005, after growing by just more than 10 million euros between 2003 and 2004.
If official statistics are incomplete and unreliable, Alexandr and others coming and going from the country know the source of Macedonia’s burgeoning remittances. After multiple trips already, Alexandr plans to return to Afghanistan in early 2008 for another paycheck.
He says his job with KBR was “an offer I couldn’t refuse. … Everyone that applies for such an employment must pass a health examination and a short training in Houston [Texas]. The ones that pass are immediately sent to their new job position by military airplane, while the ones that don’t are sent home.”
“When I entered the plane for Afghanistan I felt fear and anxiety for the first time,” he continues, noting, however, that the base where he works is far away from any conflict.
Inside the base, there are people with different professions: electricians, carpenters, plumbers, cooks, and mechanics. Many of them are from Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, and Bosnia.
Residents of Kumanovo, a city of just over 100,000 people, say the employers in high-risk areas don’t guarantee any insurance; they are not responsible if something happens to a worker.
“We pay for our life insurance. It costs [78 euros] per month,” Alexandr says. “We are inside the base all the time, and it’s forbidden to go outside from it. If you want to go out, it’s at your own risk.”
PROBLEMS DELIVERED IN CASH
Many Kumanovo residents say the drain of people from the city is causing economic problems. Although the money sent home has helped improve some people’s standard of living by pumping money into their personal accounts, inflation is also on the rise.
The people who are working abroad – most of whom are men – send home cash, which their families then spend. The remittances of “Afghanistan people,” as the workers are known, go toward new apartments, houses, and expensive cars. The result is an increase in rental rates and other commodity prices.
“We can’t buy apartments in Kumanovo anymore because in the past three to four years they became very, very expensive,” says Slavica, a woman from Kumanovo. “In the past, the value of apartment of 40 to 50 square meters was 15,000 euros. Now for this money I can buy an apartment of only 30 square meters.”
“Most of the apartments in newly built buildings are bought by workers in Afghanistan and Iraq,” she adds.
Representatives of real estate agencies in Kumanovo say they have noticed the trend, but they don’t want to discuss why it is happening for fear of losing well-off clients.
Katerina Spasovska, a lawyer from Kumanovo, said she is disappointed in the behavior of her fellow citizens who choose to work abroad and send money back. She is more upset, however, by their family members who spend the remittances to the detriment of the local economy.
“Many doctors, lawyers, [and] students from high schools went to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and many other crisis regions,” Spasovska says. “There’s a group of people [receiving remittances] who think that they can buy anything with money who are acting like Hollywood celebrities.”
She also stresses that the remittances are creating temporary and artificial divisions of social classes, between the haves and the have-nots. “Migration of Macedonians is a problem that we must think about very seriously,” Spasovska says.
The flow of workers to high-risk areas, however, seems unlikely to slow soon. Lured by offers of comparatively high salaries, interested candidates are willing to risk their safety to send money home, no matter its fluctuating effect on inflation rates. A taste of the good life after just a few weeks or months of work seems worth it.
But not even short-term wealth is guaranteed. In 2004, three Macedonians working in Iraq with the company Soufan Engineering, which is based in the United Arab Emirates, never made it home. Dalibor Lazerevski, Zoran Naskovski, and Dragan Markovik, all from Kumanovo, were kidnapped and killed by their captors.