Salvational Update

On August 28 Atyrau City Court #1 issued a decision to reject the claim of Labor and Public Social Protection Department on admission of discrimination facts in foreign companies. 

In our previous article we wrote that the reason for the lawsuit was the difference in salaries of local and expat specialists in Kazakhstan Caspian Offshore Industries (a joint venture of Rosetti Kazakhstan LLP and MART Machine Building Plant), revealed by the Department. According to the Head of the Atyrau Oblast Department of Ministry of Labor and Public Social Protection Alipkali DAULETYAROV, locals and expats holding the same position received absolutely different salaries. For example – a local instrumentation specialist earns 280,000 tenge a month, whereas an expat gets 1,111,000 tenge for the same job. 

The company lawyer Alexander KOROBEINIKOV (on photo), who is, as he said, an expat specialist as well, being a citizen of Belarus, stated that the fact is the result of a formal mistake - expat specialists were performing a wide range of duties, which had not been indicated in the staffing chart and their job descriptions. So, by rewriting the job descriptions and adding the new duties into the list, the company assumed that it performed the Department’s prescript to eliminate discrimination in payment for labor.   

According to the Director of Department Temir YESTEBAYEV, the employer, by doing so, just veiled the fact of discrimination, but failed to eliminate it. After several sessions the court rejected the claim based on Articles 217 and 221 of the RoK Civil Procedural Code. The decision has not come into force yet and may be appealed or protested.

- You understand that this victory is not your merit! It’s a fault of the system, said Yestebayev to Korobeinikov, who was making no secret of his happiness. Then he turned to journalists:

- It’s a surprise to us. We provided enough evidence to the court. I have no idea what did prosecutors follow by issuing such a conclusion. I believe the judicial proceedings have not ended at this – we will be working upon other facts and go on checking other companies. I hope we will prove our rightness and manage to protect the rights of Kazakhstan citizens.

To the question if they revealed similar facts in other audits he replied:

- You, journalists, know that we have not officially revealed these facts, but they are real. We intend to prove them, but the court hasn’t accepted it yet. Maybe this is a result too…

The actions of KCOI, which simply rewrote job descriptions and won the lawsuit owing to this, show us that foreign employers will find thousands of similar tricks. For example, an employer may reduce an expat’s official salary to the level of local salaries and compensate it by paying him large bonuses in the home country. In fact, for this reason, we need the help of the country's best lawyers.   

By Zulfiya ISKALIYEVA