A strong reaction from the delegates of the III Congress of Miners of Ukraine, which opened today in Kyiv, was caused by the appearance of the Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Vladimir Demchishin at the congress and his answers to questions about the cost of coal, wage arrears and strikes.
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Answering the questions asked of him, the minister tried to convince those gathered that the price of Ukrainian coal is low because it is set by the market. “The ministry has no influence on the price,” the minister said, after which his speech was interrupted by indignant shouts.
“Wage arrears accumulated as a result of the fact that during November-December it was not possible to receive UAH 1 billion 800 million from the budget, including UAH 680 million in salaries were not paid.
In March and April, we paid more than UAH 1 billion in wages. We can only pay off the debt in the coming months by receiving support from the budget. This is a very difficult task in the current conditions, you understand the budget situation, money is spent on supporting the army and law enforcement agencies,” the official said.
The miners started screaming again.
The minister said miners should not go on strike because it would deprive them of income.
“We need to form a constructive process. The program (industry reforms) has been developed for a long time, since December. At the end of January, the prime minister gave permission to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Social Affairs to develop a comprehensive program,” Demchishin continued.
“The mines are planned to close this year, why are you telling all this?” – the head of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Mikhail Volynets, asked the minister, after which the miners began to whistle and shout “ganba!”
“We have paid off wage arrears by 85%. The debt now is a little more than 200 million. These amounts will be repaid in the next month,” the minister assured.
“This is not true, you underestimated the wage arrears by more than two times - it is now 500 million,” Mikhail Volynets interrupted the minister.
“Why do we have wage arrears and you don’t?” – one of the delegates asked later, coming to the microphone. The minister promised that money to cover the debt would be received by the miners before May 1.
One of the delegates accused the minister of having ordered at one of the meetings to drive “this drunken codla” (i.e., the Lvovugol miners who were on strike) into the mine with the help of special forces, which caused another outburst of indignation.
The minister responded that there was no point in commenting on the accusations without any confirmation. “I don’t see the point in refuting these words. I didn’t say that,” after which he expressed his opinion about the Lvovugol strike and noted that the issue of debt at the striking mine had already been resolved.