Today, during a press conference following the meeting of the Government, the Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Population Tamara Duissenova answered the journalists' questions about the progress of work on formalizing the self-employed.

According to Minister Tamara Duissenova, from December 2016 to March 2017, the status of all citizens of the country was checked in the information systems of state bodies. As a result of the reconciliation, the social status of 13.2 million people was determined, and for 5.7 million — was not identified.

"They live in Kazakhstan, but they are not among the workers who make compulsory pension contributions, neither are they among students or beneficiaries of social payments," Tamara Duissenova said.

To determine the status of these citizens, the Ministry sent a list indicating their place of residence in electronic format to the akims of the provinces to carry out home visits. Home visits were conducted from April to August 2017. As a result, the statuses of 3 million people were updated.

At present, the Ministries of Education and Science, Justice, and Internal Affairs are involved in the work, which should update data on 943,000 citizens in information databases of state bodies, identified as people who left and died or who claimed to be students.

The remaining 1.2 million people acknowledged themselves to be informally employed. Accordingly, they do not accrue pension contributions. To date, the situation has been partially corrected: for 560 thousand of them, pension contributions are accrued, 54 thousand entrepreneurs have passed re-registration and withdrew from the shadow business.

In addition, Tamara Duissenova noted that the main task of the MLSPP is to involve 1.5 million unproductively self-employed and unemployed people in productive employment. In 2018, it is planned to cover 571 thousand of them with employment. For this purpose, 743 thousand potential jobs were identified.

Most participants will be involved in the Productive Employment and Territorial Development Programs. More than half of them will be employed for permanent jobs. Others are directed to subsidized jobs and to training in demanded professions.