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Strategies & Market Trends : Investment in Russia and Eastern Europe

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To: Real Man who wrote ()	5/18/1998 5:40:00 PM
From: Real Man	Read Replies (2) of 1301

MOSCOW, May 18 (AFP) - Siberian miners stepped up their protest over unpaid wages Monday, blocking main rail and road links, even after the new Russian government pledged cash to end its first social crisis. Around 600 coal workers blocked Trans-Siberian railways in the Kemerovo region for the fourth day running while another 700 miners walked off the job and called for an unlimited strike in Rostov-on-Don. In the northern town of Vorkuta, the protestors locked a local administration official in his office while in the Urals, miners stopped traffic using one of the region's principal roads. The widespread action has been a test of Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko's pledge before his investment April 24 to tackle Russia's chronic problem of unpaid state workers. Sunday, Deputy Premier and Energy Minister Boris Nemtsov promised seven million roubles (1.14 million dollars) would be paid by the end of the week to cover the arrears in Kemerovo. He also said 3.4 million roubles would be paid to finance a job-creation programme. But those figures fall far short of the 1.3 billion roubles (212 million dollars) owed to miners in the region, and Kemerovo governor Aman Tuleyev said at least 30 million roubles would have to be paid to put an end to the protests. In the northern region of Inta, where the main train line to Moscow has been blocked for five days, Nemtsov said 11 million roubles would be paid to make up the wages. As of May 1, the state owed some 3.7 billion roubles in back wages to the miners. Russia's ailing coal industry has been crippled by internal debts and high transport tariffs, leading to chronic wage backlogs in impoverished mining towns. The total unpaid wages bill for state workers stood at 58 billion roubles as of March, unions say.

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