The village of Solotvyno in Transcarpathia was previously known far beyond the borders of Ukraine thanks to the high-quality salt that it supplied to the markets of medieval and modern Europe. Now all this is in the past, the salt mine is being liquidated. Yesterday's salt miners have either become traders or earn a living outside their home village.
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The village mayor of Solotvino, Yuri Ukhal, spoke about this In an interview , published in the local publication “Voloshina”.
“Now my fellow countrymen earn their living outside the village, not at home. This is not normal, because families and connections between generations are being destroyed. Deputies and active citizens believe that prospects for the village will appear only when salt production is restored. Salt was mined here, this work gave people good profits, people worked and did not leave their home village. Now a lot has changed, and these changes are not in favor of the locality. We must do everything to restore the salt mining industry, on the basis of which Solotvyno can successfully develop. There are grounds for optimistic hopes, and this is the main thing,” he is confident.
One of the features of Solotvin is that it is largely populated by Romanians. At the same time, this national minority experiences, according to the head, the same socio-economic problems as other Ukrainians.
“- What are the main problems in the life of Romanians in Solotvino?
– They are inseparable from those with which all people live in our settlement. Over the past seven years, two mines, No. 8 and No. 9, where salt was mined, have closed. In 1989, salt production approached 1 million tons per year. One of these mines was flooded in 2009, the second is now at the stage of flooding. 1900 people were employed at the salt mine, now about 100 remain (the process of liquidation of the enterprise has not yet been completed). In addition, two spent mines were used to operate allergy hospitals – Ukrainian and Transcarpathian regional,” says the village mayor.
According to him, these hospitals, thanks to speleotherapy, provided highly effective care to patients with asthma and allergic diseases, and improved the health of 12-13 thousand patients annually. “Now both hospitals are also working, but in a limited mode - on the surface, which, of course, is not so effective,” complains Yuri Ukhal.
Also, according to him, the Europeans want to help the village in solving environmental problems that arose due to the closure of local mines.
“We don't lose hope. In September-October last year, envoys from the European Commission and Brussels came to us to study the possibilities of safely terminating the activities of the enterprise. This is difficult to solve, because the soil settles above the former mine workings and huge abysses are formed,” said the village mayor.
The village mayor of Solotvyno also touched upon the recently initiated scandalous changes to language legislation in terms of total Ukrainization.
“In schools, as far as I remember, they wrote in school magazines in Moldavian, but now they have switched to Ukrainian. As we see, there is a Ukrainization of the school process. In addition, Romanian school graduates today cannot take university entrance exams in their native language, as was the case before. Now the EIT is only in Ukrainian, and not everyone speaks it perfectly,” he complains.
According to him, the total Ukrainization proposed by the Rada deputies will not benefit the village. After all, here relations between local authorities and the population have always been based on the principle of respect for the national and cultural characteristics of citizens.
“Let’s say a pensioner comes to the council who doesn’t speak a language other than Romanian. They speak to her in her native language, and the documents are drawn up, of course, in the state language. If some Hungarian grandmother comes in, she will be received by the deputy chairman who speaks this language. This has been our custom for a long time and we do not want to give up this tradition, since we consider it correct and democratic. Such relationships between national groups in our village suit everyone, so there is no point in changing, formatting or canceling them,” the head is sure.