As the ruble continues to lose its value, migrant workers are fleeing the construction site of Zenit Arena, Russia's most expensive football stadium, again raising concerns about the project's timely completion. Mikhail Demidenko, chairman of the construction committee at St Petersburg's City Hall, was quoted as saying by the website Sportbox.ru that about 20% of migrant workers have left. Demidenko: "They're leaving because of the weak ruble." Over the past 12 months, the value of the Russian currency has fallen by more than 50% against the U.S. dollar and the Euro, which led to shrinking wages of migrant workers, who mostly come from the former Soviet Union's Central Asian republics.
RED TAPE: Much lower wages in dollar terms, coupled with recently introduced stricter work permit procedures, have made work in Russia much less attractive for the lion's share of migrant workers. Meanwhile, most construction sites throughout Russia primarily employ personnel from Central Asia. A spokesperson for the construction committee played down possible ramifications of migrant workers' exodus for the Zenit Arena project. "There is some decline in numbers of construction workers, which is due to their paperwork issues," she told SBD Global. "But it shouldn't have an impact on the schedule." However, construction of Zenit Arena, which is scheduled to host World Cup matches in '18, has not been exactly smooth, often going over budget and behind schedule. The original completion date was '15, but it was later moved to '16. Between the beginning of construction back in '07 and '14, its cost snowballed from 6.7B rubles ($180M) to 35B rubles, which corresponds to $944M at the '14 exchange rate. It is not yet clear how the ruble devaluation will impact construction costs.
Vladimir Kozlov is a writer in Moscow.