KHUJAND, February 5, 2010, Asia-Plus  -- 284 families (totaling 862 people) from various regions of Tajikistan have moved to Russia under the Russian national program to assist the voluntary resettlement of fellow-countrymen living abroad to the Russian Federation since 2007, when the program was launched, Oleg Kobernik, an expert with the representative office of Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) in Tajikistan, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.

“Of them 76 families have moved to the Lipetsk region, 67 families have moved to the Kaluga region, 59 families have moved to the Kaliningrad region and 28 families have moved to the Tver region,” Kobernik said.

According to him, the FMS office in Tajikistan has received resettlement applications from 5,568 Tajik nationals so far and 1,001 of them have been accepted for participation in the program.  “Other applications were refused because the documents had been filled in wrong or qualification of applicant does not meet requirements,” Kobernik said.