Angry miners tell Kyiv officials: we're not gonna take it anymore (06/14/98)

Angry miners tell Kyiv officials: we're not gonna take it anymore

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Stating that they will not leave until the money is in the bank, some 1,000 coal miners - participants of a 500-kilometer (310-mile) march from the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, entered Kyiv on June 11 to demand unpaid wages owed them by Ukraine's government and the reduction of coal imports.

The coal miners said they are determined to stay until all their demands are met, and that this time rhetoric will not suffice. "This time we will not be satisfied with promises by the government," said 32-year-old Nikolai Passirov of Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. "We want to see the money in the salary accounts of every mine. We will demonstrate until they fulfill our demands."

The 1,000 miners spent 17 days on the road during a heat wave that has given Ukraine record temperatures for this time of year. At night they camped out in fields or at the homes of friends and sympathizers. They said they subsisted on the good will of people they met on their journey, although some rumors have circulated that the Hromada Party, a staunch critic of the Kuchma administration, financed the march. Hromada's leader, Pavlo Lazarenko, hails from Dnipropetrovsk.

One coal miner, who said he had not bathed properly in three weeks and had lost 7 kilograms (15 pounds) during the march, remarked, "Do you think we would have arrived in this condition if we had that kind of financing?"

The miners have been battling the government for wages since 1992 and have organized strikes several times a year. Each time, however, either the demands have been fulfilled only partially, or wage payments have been halted after a brief resumption.

Ukraine's coal miners have been caught in the political game between the country's executive and legislative branches. While the government says it cannot release money to pay the wages owed without approval by the Verkhovna Rada, the Verkhovna Rada accuses the government of shortchanging the miners in its budget funding.

Last week the legislature passed a resolution that demands that the government raise state subsidies to the coal industry by 600 million hrv from the 2.3 billion allocated.

However, with the Verkhovna Rada leaderless and deadlocked in its attempt to elect a chairman, little movement on paying the back wages is expected soon,

As the coal miners neared Kyiv on June 5, the government of Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko offered to immediately release 25 percent of the money owed - an offer that the Independent Miners Union of Ukraine, which represents the demonstrators, refused. The union is demanding payment of 75 percent of the overdue wages as a starting point for negotiations.

The latest strike began on May 15, when hundreds of miners from the coal-rich area of Pavlohrad, gathered in the oblast capital of Dnipropetrovsk to demand repayment of back wages. After their demands were not met by local officials, the miners set off on May 24 on their trek to Ukraine's capital city.

The marching miners entered Kyiv in the early morning of June 11 after camping at the city limits the previous night. After washing up on the banks of Dnipro River, they entered the city center and stopped at the ancient Monastery of the Caves (Pecherska Lavra) to receive a blessing before moving to the Verkhovna Rada building.

Beating plastic water bottles and helmets against the ground in the 90 degree heat, the sun-scorched and obviously road-weary miners chanted "zar-pla-ta" (wages) and waved banners as curious national deputies and clerks peered out the windows of Ukraine's Parliament. After briefly meeting with members of a special parliamentary committee set up to review their demands, they moved on to the Cabinet of Ministers building and then the Presidential Administration offices.

The coal miners are due a total of 2.2 billion hrv ($1.1 billion U.S.). Some have not been paid for 18 months and rely on subsidies from friends and relatives.

"[The government] gives us 50 hrv ($25) and some foodstuffs to appease us, and I'm supposed to live on that. My family helps me, and my wife speculates at the marketplace," said Oleksander Promarenko, 58, of Donetsk, one of approximately 300 coal miners from mines in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts who have been demonstrating daily in Kyiv for two weeks in moral support of their Dnipropetrovsk union brothers.

The coal miners are also demanding that Ukraine stop importing cheaper coal from Poland and Russia and that safety conditions of the mines be upgraded. "Our tools and machinery are run down or broken," explained coal miner Raul Vakhitov. "The directors have sold off the good stuff."

The miners have called their latest action a step up from their more passive previous attempts, in which they would strike for several days and demonstrate before the offices of local coal mining officials, or travel to Kyiv for one day of demonstrations in front of central government offices. This time they are ready for an extended stay and more.

"If they don't pay our wages, this time we will not leave so quietly. There has been talk of blocking the railroad lines into the city," said Mr. Passirov, a coal miner from Pavlohrad.