Azerbaijan is drafting amendments to its Labour Code that would require employers to pay wages through an electronic payment channel designated by the Central Bank of Azerbaijan, allowing payments to be monitored digitally. Deputy Labour Minister Zaur Aliyev outlined the plan to lawmakers.
Zaur Aliyev, deputy minister of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population, told a committee discussion at the Milli Majlis that amendments and additions are being prepared to the Labour Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan and related legislation. Under the proposal, wages and other payments to employees would be processed through data drawn from the ministry’s central electronic information database, with funds transferred to a bank account chosen by each employee, forming a system of electronic control over wage payments.
How the new oversight mechanism would work
According to the deputy minister, the system would go beyond simply confirming the amount stated in an employment contract. It would also verify, through electronic tracking, whether wages have actually been paid. This is meant to expose cases where payments are delayed, transferred in reduced amounts, or partly withheld.
Zaur Aliyev said the system would also give employees electronic access to information about their own wages, deductions and income history. He added that the change would ease employers’ reporting burden, speed up the generation of tax and social insurance data, and enable automatic calculation of average wages in cases such as leave, business trips or temporary incapacity to work.
The deputy minister concluded that the planned changes would lay the groundwork for a unified, proactive oversight system based on digital information-sharing between parties in the labour sphere.
