Turks head to building sites in Iraq and Russia

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

A view of the Fisht Olympic Stadium (L) and a skating facility under construction in the Olympic Park to be used for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Turkish firms and employees are largely involved in Russian construction businesses. REUTERS photo

The Turkish Labor Institution (İşkur) sent more than 43,000 employees to work abroad in the first 10 months of the year, up from 39,664 in the same period in 2011. Half of them went to Iraq and Russia, where they are traditionally recruited in construction jobs.

İşkur sent about 11,900 workers to Iraq, 11,000 workers to Russia, 4,000 workers to Turkmenistan, 2,500 workers to Saudi Arabia, 1,800 workers to Azerbaijan, 1,280 workers to Afghanistan, 1,100 workers to Germany and 940 workers to Kazakhstan. The number of workers who went to Afghanistan, Algeria, Qatar, Libya, Sudan and Lebanon went down in same compared period, while the figures were up for Germany, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

After World War II Germany, a reconstructing developed country, was the main host of Turkish “gastarbeiter,” or expatriate workers.

The number of workers who went to Iraq was up by more than 3,600 workers and the figure for Russia-bound workers was up by about 3,100 when compared with the same period a year earlier.

Separately, more than 2 billion Turkish Liras have been spent to find jobs for the unemployed since 2003, according to İşkur data. The money was mostly invested in courses for vocational training, public work volunteer programs, job shadowing and entrepreneurship programs, which some 1.15 million people attended in the last 10 years, data showed.

770 million liras spent in 10 months

Some 770 million liras have been spent this year as of the end of October. The expenditure jumped from 35.5 million liras in 2008 to 306.3 million liras in 2009 and was around 390 million in the next two years.

In the last 10 years more than 1 million liras were spent for vocational training courses, where more than 742,000 people were trained. Public work volunteer programs, which cost 936.7 million liras, attracted nearly 310,200 people.

ome 45,000 people attended job shadowing programs, which received about 34,500 liras. More than 50,400 people signed up for entrepreneurship programs, which were allocated about 16,000 liras.

Meanwhile recent data from the Labor Ministry showed that Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian workers top the list of foreigners in Turkey who obtained work permits last year. Some 1,648 Chinese, 1,432 Russian and 1,278 Ukrainian workers were granted work permits in 2011.