Golden Captives
SEVERAL THOUSAND GOLD MINERS MAY ONLY SURVIVE BY MIRACLE
Summary
Local officials have officially liquidated nine gold mining areas in the Yakutiya over the past two years, the daily reported.
There are no schools, no shops, no medical care and no pharmacies. Still, more than 4,500 people, including 900 children, continue to reside in the terrible Siberian cold, without electricity, heat or plumbing. They have been waiting for two years to be transferred to what they refer to as "the mainland" -- central Russia. In Olchan, for example, people get their water by melting snow. They break into abandoned houses for lumber, and eat dogs and tree bark, the daily wrote.
This situation is the result of the government's "restructuring" of the gold mining industry. In 1992, then Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar went to Yakutiya with a calculator and declared that Yakutian gold was too expensive. He said it was cheaper to buy gold in London, than to support the whole infrastructure of the gold-mining regions in the terrible Yakutiya climate.
Local officials then began the restructuring program. The problem, however, is that the state does not provide new housing for people who leave their apartments in Yakutiya. Some of them decided to leave despite this, and not even wait for payments of wage arrears from 1996-97. Others simply do not have anywhere else to go, and now they will have to live through another harsh winter.
russiatoday.com |
