In a couple of months the mines will die - miners rally outside the Office of the President of Ukraine
Miners from different regions of Ukraine gathered for a protest rally near the Office of the President of Ukraine.
The meeting, organized by the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, should be the beginning of an indefinite strike, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The main demand of those gathered was to ensure the operation of coal mining enterprises. Although wage debts are periodically paid off, the situation in the industry is extremely unstable - some state-owned enterprises and DTEK enterprises have been idle for three months.
State mines do not receive money for the coal extracted and delivered to thermal power plants, and employees have nothing to pay. Private mines continue to pay, but they won’t be able to operate like this for long.
“The owner has been paying us a salary, not very much, for the third month now. It is unknown how long we will continue to be paid this salary. There will still come a time when they will stop paying him. And our mines are city-forming enterprises. For now, these mines can still be returned to production, but in a couple of months this will be impossible. The mines will simply die.
What should people do? Don't know. They simply have nowhere to go. If the mines die, people will die. In our region, these are Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk regions, approximately one and a half million people are in one way or another connected with the coal industry,” said Ruslan Shevchenko, representing the organization NPGU Belozerskaya mine.
According to him, the government is doing nothing to protect local coal and electricity producers.
“The electricity market has been disrupted, our market quota has been taken away by Russian coal, cheap Russian oil, fuel oil, and gas. Those boiler houses that previously operated on Ukrainian coal began to be converted to gas. The country has a surplus of coal, about 2 million tons. Our mine contains 80 thousand tons of unclaimed coal. Our share in the electricity market was cut from 26% to 8%,” the miner noted.
Miners from cities such as Ugledar, Selidovo, Uglegrad, Dobropolye, Pervomaisk, and Chervonograd came to the rally.
The protesters held posters and banners with the inscriptions “We mine coal, but we don’t get paid,” “Stop destroying the coal industry,” “Save our jobs, salaries, pensions,” etc.
The miners banged their helmets on the steps of the porch of the Office of the President of Ukraine and chanted “Vova, come out!”
The NPGU delegation also visited the Office of the President of Ukraine and conveyed the demands of the miners to officials.
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