Wide-scale protests by coal miners that began in eastern Ukraine last week reached Kyiv on Thursday with several hundred miners protesting near President Leonid Kuchma's headquarters.
Over 1,000 more miners were expected in Kyiv by Monday, and miners' leaders threaten to press ahead with their demands for back wages that are as late as 15 months at most mines.
'We are going to increase pressure on the government,' said Mykhaylo Volynets who heads the Independent Miners' Union (IMU) which organized the demonstration. 'They ask us to wait, but we are not going to wait any more.' Volynets said miners have so far refused to sign an agreement drafted during meetings with government officials since it is unclear when the extra funds it envisages for the coal sector can be provided.
Implementation of the agreement hinges on Parliament's approval of amendments to the 1998 state budget and laws dealing with state support for miners. But without a speaker, who the legislature's warring leftist and pro-government factions again failed to elect on Thursday, Parliament is not authorized to make any changes to the legislation.
Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko, who spoke at a government meeting Thursday, called payments to the miners the government's 'priority', but did not offer a concrete plan to raise money for the striking miners. The government earlier failed to reach an agreement with miners who are currently demonstrating in the eastern cities of Dnipropetrovsk and Luhansk, after acknowledging that it cannot satisfy miners' demands that their back wages be repaid immediately and in full. Miners are collectively owed over Hr 2 billion (about $1 billion) in back salaries and wage arrears have been steadily increasing since the beginning of the year. The 1998 budget envisages Hr 1.6 billion ($780 million) for state support of the coal sector, and miners estimate that to be 30 percent of the actual needs.
Thursday's protest when miners produced a constant clamor by banging their helmets against the ground in front of presidential headquarters seems to have produced results, as Kuchma fired Coal Minister Stanislav Yanko. However, this measure is unlikely to make the striking miners think differently of government coal import policies which they blame largely for the current crisis. According to the IMU, the government has imported 3.8 million tons of cheap coal from Poland and Russia since the beginning of the year, while mines in the eastern Ukrainian mining region of Donbas have collectively accumulated over 2.9 million tons of unsold coal over the same period. Although Ukraine's 230 mines increased coal output in the first quarter of this year by 1.2 million tons, workers at some mines have not received a kopeck of their salaries since the beginning of the year, and at other mines the situation is even worse.
Demonstrating miners in Kyiv who came from Partyzanska mine in the city of Antratsyt in Luhansk region said they had not been paid for seven months of work in 1997 and four months in 1996.
Miners, who were the second most highly paid category of state employees in 1990, moved down to sixteenth place in 1997. Lack of funds to modernize mine equipment and improve safety standards contributed to a sharp increase in the death rate in the industry. Over 300 miners were killed in 1997, and about 200 of them have died since the beginning of the year.
The absence of hope that there would be early improvements in the situation prompted miners in eastern Ukraine to launch a new wave of strikes this month.
Several thousand miners have been demonstrating in front of the regional administration building in Dnipropetrovsk since last week after they walked over 100 kilometers from the nearby town of Pavlohrad. Hundreds of miners are on strike in front of government headquarters in Luhansk. Over 1,000 miners of those demonstrating in Dnipropetrovsk were heading off on a 500-kilometer march from Dnipropetrovsk to the capital and were expected to reach Kyiv after the weekend.
'People are so desperate that they refuse to go to Kyiv by bus,' said a miner from Pavlohradvuhillya mining company who was together with the marching miners last Wednesday. 'Despite bleeding feet, they say they'll continue walking although some of them can barely do so.'
