Eighteen policies in four days: how a group from Tajikistan filed for residence on time

01 / Thursday, 17:40

A call about the policies five days before filing

At 17:40 on Thursday Sherzod was sitting in the kitchen of the dormitory in a village outside Vinnytsia, going through the list for the next day's trip to the tax office with Umed, the group leader. Eighteen clear folders lay on the table, each holding a passport, a copy of the work permit, a signed employment contract and an insurance policy. The group from Tajikistan had arrived three days earlier, the contracts had been signed on Tuesday, and the migration partner already had residence permit appointments for the following week: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, six people a day.

That was when the phone rang. The migration partner's specialist had been checking the residence permit packs and had reached the policies. The first page of each showed a term of one year. On the third page, in the small print of the insurance rules, it said that a single stay abroad was covered for no more than 90 days. The group was filing for residence permits for the term of their work permits, twelve months, and the partner does not file a pack with a policy whose cover ends after three months. Not one of the eighteen policies would do.

That left Friday, a weekend and Monday before the first appointment. We did not want to move the filings: the next free slots for a group of six were three weeks away, and we never put off the residence permit, because it is what turns an arrival into lawful stay for the whole term of work. Sherzod put the tax office list aside, photographed the third page of one policy and sent it to Nataliia, Head of our Documents team. The rest of this story is about the four days in which eighteen policies had to be replaced, so that on Tuesday nobody would stand at the service window holding a document that did not fit.

The policy was genuine and valid. It simply ended sooner than the residence permit the person was applying for.

02 / Request

Eighteen people before the harvest intake

This group entered the plan two months before that call. In mid-July the HR director of a fruit packing house in the Vinnytsia region came to Olena, who runs client projects at WORKIN, with a specific task. The packing house takes in apples and pears from orchards across the district, stores them in cold chambers and packs them for retail chains. By mid-September, when the harvest intake starts, it needed eighteen sorters and packers for a year: people who handle fruit carefully and are not put off by the weight of full crates.

The packing house did not name a country, so we compared the options on what matters for these particular roles. First, experience with fruit specifically, because a bruised apple will not go to a retail chain. Second, the language people would use with the supervisors, who speak Russian. Third, the route: there were less than two months until mid-September, so only a visa-free route of four to seven weeks would work. Fourth, a reserve of candidates with our partners for the end of the summer.

All four criteria pointed to Tajikistan. In the Sughd region, in Isfara and Kanibadam, there are large apricot orchards and sites where fruit is sorted, dried and packed. The apricot season there ends in August, so people who have worked with fruit all summer are free by the autumn. Most candidates speak Russian, citizens of Tajikistan enter Ukraine without a visa, and our licensed partner in Khujand had put groups together for us before. We looked at Kyrgyzstan too, which has strong packing teams, but our partner's reserve in the Sughd region had more people used both to fruit and to the weight of the crates. Olena took the HR director through the comparison, and the packing house agreed.

Who is needed

18 sorters and packers for a year

Timing

By mid-September, the start of the harvest intake

Why Tajikistan

Fruit experience, Russian, visa-free route, partner reserve

Housing

The packing house's dormitory in a neighbouring village

03 / Selection

Isfara, Kanibadam and a crate of mixed apples at the interview

Sherzod, our Worker Relations Manager for Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, ran the interviews together with the partner. He spoke Tajik: people talk about themselves more easily that way, and he can hear who has really worked with fruit and who has only heard about it. The interviews took three days in Isfara, Kanibadam and Khujand, and for each one the partner brought a crate of mixed apples from the local bazaar.

The trial was simple and easy to judge. The candidate sorted the apples by size into three groups, set aside the bruised and blemished ones, and then packed one group into a tray so that the fruit did not rub together. The packing house's section manager watched on a video call and decided herself whom to approve. Sherzod watched for something else: whether a person rushed at the expense of quality, and whether they understood instructions in Russian the first time.

Umed is forty-one and spent twelve seasons at an apricot drying site in Isfara. His two sons are at school, and he is going so that the elder can go on to college. Sukhrob is twenty-four, comes from Kanibadam and is travelling abroad for the first time. Firuz is thirty-three and spent three years packing fruit at a warehouse in Khujand. The packing house approved eighteen people and three reserves, and Sherzod asked Umed to be group leader: both the younger men and those his own age listen to him.

For every approved candidate we opened a card: the name in Latin letters exactly as in the passport, date of birth, passport number and expiry date, and the position. The card became the single source of data for the permit, the contract, the address registration and, as it turned out later, the insurance policies.

04 / Route

One-year permits, an information sheet in Tajik and the border at dawn

Nataliia gathered the packing house's documents using the company checklist while the interviews were still going on. The candidates made copies of their passport pages from the originals, and the translations into Ukrainian carried a notarised translator's signature. The packing house offered twelve-month employment contracts, and we filed for work permits for the same term: under the law a permit for an employee is issued for the term of the employment contract, but for no more than two years. A decision on issue is made within seven working days, and all eighteen permits came through in five.

While the employment centre reviewed the applications, each candidate received an information sheet in Tajik and Russian: the position and pay from the draft contract, the contract term, the addresses of the packing house and the dormitory, which documents to carry at the border, what they would be asked there and how to reach Sherzod. A separate line said that the candidate pays nothing for the job: this is a rule of our contract with the partner, and everyone confirmed it with a signature. The list of things to take included a medical insurance policy. Everyone bought theirs from the same insurer in Khujand, going there together with the partner.

Before visa-free entry Sherzod gave the group a briefing in Khujand: the purpose of the trip is work under a permit, the dormitory address, the name of the packing house, the contract term. Each person's folder held a copy of the permit, the packing house's invitation, proof of housing and the policy. The group crossed the land border at dawn on Monday, the border guards asked about the purpose of the trip and looked through the folders, and all eighteen were cleared. Sherzod met everyone just past the checkpoint, and by lunchtime the packing house's bus had brought the group to the dormitory.

1. Week 1

   Request, country comparison, Tajikistan agreed.

2. Weeks 1-2

   Interviews and trials in Isfara, Kanibadam and Khujand: 18 people and 3 reserves.

3. Week 3

   Passport translations, filing for 18 permits.

4. Week 4

   Permits issued in five working days, information sheets, briefing.

5. Week 6, Monday

   Border crossing, move into the dormitory.

6. Week 6, Tuesday

   Employment contracts, tax number applications.

7. Week 6, Thursday

   Residence permit packs checked, the call about the policies.

8. Week 7

   Residence permit filings in three groups of six.

05 / Partner check

The term on the cover and the term in the insurance rules

To see why the partner rejected the policies, it helps to look at the terms of all of a person's documents as one chain. The employment contract runs for twelve months. The work permit is issued for the term of the contract. The temporary residence permit is issued up to the expiry of the work permit. And the migration partner checks the insurance policy in the residence permit pack against exactly that term: the cover has to last as long as the residence permit the person is applying for.

The Khujand policies were genuine and valid, and they had done their job for entry. The problem was not the document itself but the rules under which it worked. The insurer issued the policy for a calendar year, but a single trip was covered for no more than 90 days. For someone who had come for a year, this meant that by December they would in practice have no insurance cover in Ukraine, whatever the first page said.

We always pass policies bought at home to the migration partner for checking: if the cover fits the filing, the person does not need a second policy. The partner reads not the first page but the insurance rules down to the last clause, and does not go to the service with a policy whose cover is shorter than the residence permit term. We agree with that approach: better to hear no from the partner on Thursday than at the service window on Tuesday.

06 / Four days

Eighteen new policies between Thursday and Tuesday

By 18:10 on Thursday Sherzod, Nataliia and the partner's specialist were working through the options on the phone. The first was to ask the insurer in Khujand to change the terms. Sherzod rang its office that same evening: the 90-day rule per trip is the same for all of that company's policies and cannot be changed for a group. The second was to move the filings by three weeks, and it was ruled out at once. The third was to arrange new policies with an insurer that operates in Ukraine and issues policies to foreign nationals remotely, on passport data, without the person visiting an office. The partner confirmed that it checks and files such policies regularly, and we went with the third option.

That evening Nataliia built a table from the candidate cards. It had eighteen rows and five columns: the name in Latin letters exactly as in the passport, passport number, date of birth, work permit expiry date and filing date. The last two dates defined the policy: cover had to start no later than the filing day and end no earlier than the day the work permit expires. The whole group's permits had been issued on the same day, so the end date was the same in all eighteen rows, which made the insurer's job simpler.

At nine on Friday morning the table and passport scans were with the insurer. Meanwhile Olena called the packing house's HR director: she explained what had happened, that the filing appointments stayed as they were and that nothing more was needed from the packing house. The first twelve policies arrived on Friday evening and the other six by Saturday lunchtime. Nataliia checked each one against the table letter by letter as it came in: name, passport number, date of birth, start and end of cover, territory.

In two policies the end date turned out to be one day before the work permit expired: the insurer had counted a year from the date of issue rather than to the date in the table. At ten on Monday Nataliia received the corrected policies, and by lunchtime the partner had checked all eighteen once more and confirmed the packs were ready. That evening Sherzod printed the policies and put them into the folders in the same order the documents would sit in the residence permit pack.

1. Thursday, 17:40

   The partner reports that the Khujand policies will not do for the filing.

2. Thursday evening

   Call to the insurer in Khujand, decision on new policies, a table of 18 rows.

3. Friday, 9:00

   Table and passport scans with the insurer, the packing house informed.

4. Friday and Saturday

   All 18 policies issued, each checked against the table.

5. Monday

   Two policies corrected, the partner approves all packs.

6. Tuesday, 8:00

   The first six leave for their appointment.

07 / Talking to the group

What Sherzod explained in Tajik on Friday evening

News about the policies went round the dormitory on Thursday, before Sherzod had had a chance to explain anything. Sukhrob decided he had broken some rule and would be sent home. Two others were sure they would have to go back to Khujand to change their policies in person. Umed came to Sherzod late that evening and asked him to get everyone together: talking to each man separately would mean eighteen different versions by morning.

On Friday after work Sherzod gathered the group in the dormitory kitchen and spoke in Tajik. He started with the main point: nobody had done anything wrong. The policies were valid, the entry was lawful, and the time they could stay without a residence permit was nowhere near its limit. Only one document in the filing folder was changing, and it was changing without any travel: the insurer issues the policy on passport data. Each person had to do just one thing, check their own row in the table, because nobody knows the Latin spelling of a name better than its owner.

One by one people came up to the laptop and looked at their row. Firuz asked for his new Ukrainian phone number to be added, so that the policy would reach him too. Sukhrob asked whether he could now throw away his Khujand policy. Sherzod advised keeping it: it had covered the journey and the first weeks, so it could stay in the folder next to the new one. The talk lasted forty minutes, and the next morning nobody in the group chat was writing about going home.

1. 01

   What stays the same

   The work permit, the employment contract, the dormitory address and the filing dates.

2. 02

   What changes

   The insurance policy in the residence permit pack: a new one, up to the end of the work permit.

3. 03

   What each person does

   Checks their row: Latin spelling of the name, passport number, date of birth.

4. 04

   What to keep

   The Khujand policy stays in the folder next to the new one.

08 / Filing and handover

Three days of filings on appointment and a register for the packing house

At eight on Tuesday morning the first six people got on the packing house's bus with their folders. Sherzod went with every group: he helped with the application, explained in Tajik what was happening at the window and made sure the original passports went back into their owners' hands. People filed in person and gave their biometrics, and the packs were accepted without comments. The second six filed on Wednesday and the third on Thursday. Not a single appointment had to be moved.

Everything else that belongs to the first weeks ran alongside. We filed the copies of the employment contracts within the 10-day term after signing. We had checked the dormitory documents for address registration before the group arrived, as part of living support, so registration went through without delays. People received their tax numbers within a week and opened bank accounts right after. In practice the residence permit cards take three to five weeks to produce, and Sherzod put the collection date for each group of six into a calendar shared with the packing house.

The HR director received a register of the group from us: for each worker, the work permit expiry date, the residence permit filing date, the expected card date and the end date of the new policy, which now matches the work permit. In ten months, when it is time to think about extensions, all these dates will sit side by side in one row. We keep managing the group's documents under migration support, and the documents that are the packing house's responsibility as employer are described on the employer duties page.

That is where our part ended: training and assigning people to sections is the packing house's job. The WORKIN replacement guarantee runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are kept: finding a replacement is not charged again, while state fees, the migration partner's services, travel and living costs for the new worker are paid by the company. The three reserve candidates in Isfara know they can travel if a place becomes free, and Sherzod keeps in touch with them once a month.

09 / Summary

Eighteen policies in four days and not one appointment moved

Cause

Khujand policies covered 90 days per trip, residence permits filed for 12 months

Solution

New policies from an insurer in Ukraine, issued remotely on passport data

Check

A table from the candidate cards, two policies corrected before filing

Filing

18 people in three days on appointment, nothing moved

For the packing house

A register with permit, residence permit and policy dates for each worker

A document that fails a check five days before filing is not a reason for us to move an appointment, it is the job for those five days: find out why it does not fit, replace it and check it so that no questions come up at the service window. How we prepare a group from Tajikistan for its first border crossing is covered in the scenario on a greenhouse complex, how we plan residence permit filings far from the migration service in the scenario on a dairy farm, and why we check the name on a policy against the passport letter by letter in the scenario on D visa packs. The whole route is on the How it works page, and candidate documents on the documents for candidates page. More on the pages on workers for agriculture, packers from abroad and recruitment.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers