Coal Miners to Teach Energy People a Lesson
Western Donbas coal miners’ trade unions are threatening Ukrainian energy people with a protest action, viz., to suspend, as of January 10, the shipment of coal to power plants until arrears for the already-delivered products are cleared. This decision was made at a joint session of the presidium of the Coal Mining Industry Union’s territorial organization and the board of directors of the Independent Union of Ukraine’s Miners. To start the protest action, Western Donbas miners from the Pavlohradvuhillia holding company stopped shipping coal to the Zakhidenerho power-generation company, which comprises the Burshtyn and Ladyzhyn power plants, back on January 3.
“Western Donbas miners won’t stand to gain from the strike,” Oleksiy Bakirov, chair of the local Independent Union branch, told The Day, “but the miners have so far received only 62% of their November 2002 wages due to energy people’s failure to pay for the shipped coal. Just fancy moneyless miners’ families seeing in the New Year.” Back wages at Pavlohradvuhillia have now reached UAH 15.7 million, he said. At the same time, Zakhidenerho and Dniproenerho are running up a debt of UAH 4.41 million and UAH 6.89 million, respectively, for the shipped coal. Mr. Bakirov claims the state also “hurts” the miners, for it is still to pay UAH 27 million from its budget as a subsidy.
“What also forced the miners to start the protest action with cutting the shipment of coal to Zakhidenerho,” Mr. Bakirov pointed out, “is the fact that selling coal there brings in the least profit: each ton we supply to Burshtyn or Ladyzhyn yields us 30 hryvnias fewer than the one we send to the nearby Zaporizhzhia hydroelectric station.”
Yet, he admitted that the protest action’s first stage had so far had no success: the long- awaited money never came. On the other hand, Mr. Bakirov says, “nature itself works in our favor — the winter is in full swing, coal is needed as never before and is being taken with pleasure by coke chemists, on a pre-payment basis at that. And when light bulbs begin to go out, the energy people will wake up. We will teach them a lesson!”
Meanwhile, experts assert that Western Donbas mines continue to work uninterruptedly. In the first six working days of the new year, Pavlohradvuhillia miners produced 123,000 tons of coal, almost a record for the times we live in.
