Expert: Moldovan Authorities Instigate Diaspora to Do Protest

Dmitri ASTAHOV The situation with health insurance policies for labor migrants returning to Moldova has become another major miscalculation of the country's leadership. “Stay home!” Will probably be 2020’s most popular phrase. Calls for self-isolation come from almost all governments including the Moldovan one. Following this appeal, thousands of citizens of our country decided to return home. Many did this even before the borders were closed and even afterwards the flow of people returning did not weaken. Within two weeks, the number of such "repatriates" amounted to more than five thousand. Judging by the number of charter flights confirmed by the government in April the trend is definitely to continue in the near future. The mainstream of the Republic of Moldova’s entering citizens are mainly migrants who worked in the field of low-skilled labor (and who lost their jobs in this very bulk). All these people were abroad, naturally, not because of bearing a good life here but because of the banal inability to find work in their homeland and provide for their families. But, despite the on-duty hopes to return all migrants home someday it is beneficial to the Moldovan authorities having such a large mass of migrant workers who are able to keep afloat most of the small and medium-sized businesses in the country. However, coronavirus is fundamentally changing the usual course of things: migrants from money earners become a burden for Chisinau and an undesirable political asset for the opponents of the current Moldovan leadership. This leads to a contradictory and mostly negative authorities’ attitude towards those members of the diaspora who nevertheless decided to wait out the crisis at home. The first thousands of citizens who returned and managed to enter the country while unclosed borders with Ukraine and Romania, were met with no masks or other personal protective equipment nor severe fines for mass meetings and self-isolation violation. Nevertheless, the Moldovan government prepared its best gift for those who decided to stay longer abroad: with the decree from March 31, 2020, for all persons entering Moldova was issued a compulsory decision on medical insurance policy purchase. Its cost is 200 euros: not the biggest expenses, but still an additional financial burden if put together with the already expensive tickets for charter flights. No doubts, the authorities’ calculation is clear. During the coronavirus pandemic all health systems need additional resources. As a rule, all kinds of stressful situations suggest that specially reserved finances exist and they should be used within critical period aiming at compensating the missing funds as soon as possible. However, in the Republic of Moldova, as in many other poor countries, they decided to shift the supplementary medical sector financing burden directly to citizens. The main dissatisfaction with the compulsory policy purchase decision within Compulsory Medical Insurance System is that until April 1, 2020, such insurance was optional for the Moldovan foreign diaspora. If legally employed, supposing basically the lack of financial year in the country, CMIS is simply not required by law and if illegally working, medical insurance in Moldova is not purchased at all. This measure takes on a particularly cynical connotation if we pay attention to the financial principles of the compulsory medical insurance system: from 2016 to 2020 Moldovans had the opportunity to buy the medical policy by March 31 with a discount of up to 75%. In this light, introducing the compulsory policy purchasing principle from April 1, 2020 became a rather wicked “joke” in regard to its own diaspora. Against the backdrop of mass indignation to the introduced measure, the Moldovan authorities nevertheless “backed the pedal,” ceasing to link the acquisition of air tickets from abroad with the obligatory purchase of medical insurance policy. This will of course allow a larger number of our fellow citizens, who have probably already lost their jobs, to return home without adding the Moldovan medicine fee to the cost of quite expensive transport. Anyway, a written commitment to purchase insurance within 72 hours at the cost of the same 200 euros will not add optimism to the forced "returnees". Indeed, these are citizens that most of all expect pandemic’s ending so they return back abroad and re-establish the financial trickle to their families in Moldova. For its part, the Moldovan leadership is in no hurry to help former migrants, on the contrary, it has chosen a rather aggressive course towards them. Firstly, diaspora was immediately entrusted with all responsibility for the emergence and primary distribution of coronavirus in Moldova. Secondly, the media holdings of the ruling parties are actively circulating the opinion that labor migrants do not bring special benefits to the country and that the money they send is not of fundamental importance to the Moldovan economy. Well, that is of course, very far from truth. Together with, by now there is no preliminary work on employment programs for returning people, or at least support measures except from unemployment benefits based on the necessity to purchase compulsory medical insurance policy of a much greater cost. At date, a lot will depend on the pandemic duration in the European space. The more borders are closed and the quarantine situation in the EU countries is maintained, the worse off will be citizens returning to Moldova. Down the road, by summer, maximum by autumn the authorities risk getting a mass of thousands impoverished and extremely disloyal citizens of working age in the country and that would be an ideal “fuel” to start social uprisings, which will quickly become political within Moldovan realities. To prevent such an events development, it is necessary not only to get into the pocket of our migrants but to also offer them something in return. Otherwise, one can only hope that within a few months the majority of migrants will be able to return working in the EU and that’s what most likely, Chisinau is betting on.