Top regional and federal officials gathered to participate.
Among the attendants were President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, Federal Minister of Open Government Mikhail Abyzov, Head of the Federal Labor and Employment Service (Rostrud) Vladimir Vukolov, Rector of KFU Ilshat Gafurov, and many business executives. The main topic was the Service’s control activities in the Republic of Tatarstan.
The meeting at the Institute of Management, Economics and Finance started with a traditional tour of the facilities. Rector Gafurov showed Minister Abyzov around and told how KFU has become an innovative university and one of the pillars of the regional education and social life. He mentioned the priority areas and the strategic academic units.
KFU is the main resource of qualified professionals in the Republic, including those for the control and supervision bodies. Director of IMEF Nailya Bagautdinova said that the Institute was a natural choice for such a meeting since it concerned interactions between the government and business.
In particular, the question of law enforcement in labor was raised. The sides discussed labor safety and employer-employee relations. Trade unions, control bodies, and businesspersons talked about the necessity to make control more transparent. One of the suggestions by Minister Abyzov was to introduce self-analysis systems at companies – this would reduce the number of scheduled inspections and turn the system from its enforcing bias to a service approach. Thus all sides of the interaction can feel more protected and be incentivized to contact the government for consultations. He said that there are already examples of successful implementation – such big agencies as Emercom, Rostrud, and Rostransnadzor are already introducing pilot projects in this area. As Mr. Vukolov emphasized, to fully spread this approach some changes in law are in order. President Minnikhanov called for business and local government to participate actively in this process and to submit their ideas to the federal authorities. As was mentioned at the talks, the reform will have been completed in 2020.
This was not the first such representative meeting at the University. Ministry of Finance held its panel at IMEF in December 2016.