GOING IT ALONE

The fish look to go deeper, while a human being looks for some place that is better". This very proverb can be used to describe the social and philosophical reasons of the migration issues.

According to a report of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the number of migrants has reached 232 million or 3.2 per cent of the world population, with at least half of them being labour migrants. If the migration continues to grow at the same pace, the figure is bound to hit 400 million by 2050.

The World Bank estimates that money remittances by migrants around the world will amount to 550bn dollars in 2013. Most of the money transfers - 414bn dollars - will be carried out by migrants from developing countries.

By 2016, the total remittances by migrants will reach 700bn dollars, and for those from developing countries the figure will be 550bn dollars.

The list of countries that are the main recipients of money transfers allows shedding light on the picture reflecting the main suppliers of workforce. Thus, the WB data shows that the main recipients of money transfers in 2013 are India (about 71bn dollars), China (60bn dollars), the Philippines (26bn dollars), Mexico (22bn dollars), Nigeria (21bn dollars) and Egypt (20bn dollars). Other major recipients include Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Ukraine.

Just 10 to 15 years ago the labour migration problem was not a concern for the government of Azerbaijan as it was largely non-existent. However, rapid economic development and large-scale infrastructure projects, accompanied by a tangible increase in the number of jobs, have turned Azerbaijan into a coveted place for labour migrants. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev took notice of the potential problems in this regard and the need to seek for solutions, by establishing the State Migration Service in 2007.

An influx of labour migrants was also expected due to the intensive tapping into the country's oil and gas reserves, in which foreign companies became involved. But even back then it was specified during the signing of contracts on the development of some energy fields that the local staff has to reach 90 per cent during the period of active extraction of hydrocarbons. Whereas in the early years this figure appeared to be essentially unattainable, presently the potential level of the domestic workforce has significantly increased.

SOCAR and BP pioneered the increase of the qualifications of the local staff. Each of the two companies is implementing several educational and scholarship programmes to encourage employment of the local youth.

But it was time to make joint efforts, and on 14 October SOCAR and BP signed three documents - a protocol on cooperation on recruitment of national professionals; a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the area of studies at the Qobustan regional training centre; a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the sphere of studies at the Baku High Oil School.

These documents envisage joint work to develop the local staff, involve them in the implementation of the projects in Azerbaijan, carry out separate educational programmes for the Baku High Oil School. Under the documents, 100 people living in settlements located in the vicinity of Sanqacal Terminal will take refresher courses and training sessions.

SOCAR President Rovnaq Abdullayev said at the signing ceremony that there was a shortage of qualified staff in his company and since 2005 it had been paying special attention to training and developing needs.

"In this regard I would like to note our cooperation with the country's Ministry of Education in the sphere of reforming and modernizing vocational and technical schools," Abdullayev said.

He added that over 300 Azerbaijani citizens had been educated in 20 universities of the world since 2005 and they currently work in their home country. Moreover, SOCAR is implementing a schoolarship programme in Azerbaijani higher educational institutions, and 1,500 [most successful] students have won them.

About 150 of them currently work for SOCAR.

The main objective of the signed agreements is to develop local professional staff and minimize the number of foreign specialists working in Azerbaijan as part of the oil contracts

"Control will be stepped up to tackle the issues of replacing foreign staff with national staff in oil and gas projects of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) and other agreements signed with the partners, of arranging training processes and setting up and developing cooperation with the partners on exchange of information in these and other areas," Abdullayev said.

He went on to say that the maintaining of the legal basis of the labour market in Azerbaijan and observing and following the migration legislation must be compulsory for foreign companies operating in the oil and gas sector.

Ismayil Abdullayev, Chief of the State Migration Service's Main Department for regulating migration processes expressed the hope that the signed documents will ensure opportunities for Azerbaijani specialists to be involved even more effectively in the oil and gas operations of transnational companies.

Gordon Birrell, BP's Regional President for Azerbaijan, Georgia and

Turkey, said after the ceremony that the signing of the mentioned documents is in line with the company's commitments and the long-term strategy to involve national staff in BP operations.

"Currently the number of Azerbaijani citizens employed by BP is 2,798. Local staff employed on substantive contracts make up 84 per cent of the company's overall number of employees," Birrell said.

According to him, BP is availing of all the existing opportunities to recruit local staff both in Azerbaijan and abroad. As a result, since early 2013 the company has recruited more than 300 citizens of Azerbaijan, including 100 experienced employees, 100 technical staff and 85 young specialists.

In addition, BP has prepared a five-year plan on national staff policy, due to be implemented in 2014-2018.

"In accordance with the plan, local staff will account for 90 per cent of all specialists of the company by the end of 2018.  This means that local specialists will replace foreign nationals in a number of positions. The locals will make up 100 per cent of nonspecialist employees of the company," Birrell added.

SOCAR, for its part, also prepared a plan to recruit local nationals instead of foreigners, which envisages creating a database of local professionals, training, personnel appraisal, quality improvement, etc. One of the key points of the plan is to solve issues of foreign specialists' involvement.

In this regard, the procedure of granting of work permits to foreign citizens will be simplified with the assistance of SOCAR.

Teymur Mahmudov, deputy head of SOCAR's investment department, said at the presentation of the plan to recruit locals instead of foreigners that the company had created a database of employees in the oil and gas sector.

"We intend to expand this database and provide our partners with access to it," Mahmudov said.

For instance, when a foreign company needs an employee with certain qualifications but cannot find one in the domestic market, it will contact SOCAR and provide its job requirements. "We will examine whether we have candidates meeting those requirements in our database, and if there are ones meeting them, we'll introduce them to the foreign company. But if such a candidate is not available in Azerbaijan, we will recommend that the State Migration Service (SMS) issues a work permit to a foreign national. The entire paperwork will be processed electronically. We will also connect the SMS to this single system from 2014," Mahmudov said, adding that SOCAR's recommendations could significantly simplify the process of obtaining work permits.

SOCAR also offers the services of its training centres to foreign companies.

"All these centres have been certified by international organisations. Up until now, companies needing highly-qualified employees were either sending their local staff to abroad for getting training or they were brining foreign specialists in the country. Now, SOCAR's training centre is available for them to arrange any kind of training for any profession they need. Even if at this point we are not able to provide training on certain qualifications, we can apply to international [training] centres and arrange and start providing those training courses here," the SOCAR representative said.

Mahmudov noted that currently there is a problem of recruiting local staff for short-term projects lasting up to a year."To this end, we plan to work with our partners on the educating and training needs to develop such personnel," he said. 

Coupled with the government's successful efforts to create jobs, the implementation of these plans will allow us to involve young promising people to highly paid jobs in Azerbaijan. Naturally, this will have a good impact on the growth of the overall level of the people's education, and will help reduce poverty and unemployment in the country. And this means that the motto on turning the oil capital into human capital, put forward by President Ilham Aliyev, is becoming a reality today.