Board of honor near the Kingcoal’s building. Photo: Evgeny Kosivtsov. All rights reserved.Two years ago, four mines in Gukovo, in the southern Rostov region, closed down. The mines were the town’s main employer, but Kingcoal, the company that owned them, had gone bankrupt. Kingcoal’s CEO was sentenced to five years in prison for failing to pay employees for over a year and using company funds for his own purposes.
Next month will mark the second anniversary of the start of the Kingcoal miners’ campaign to get their wages. Almost every day, residents of Gukovo, who are mostly older people, take to the streets to demand their back pay: the Rostov regional authorities have paid out less than half of the outstanding sum. More than 2,000 people have been affected: half of the miners have yet to receive all the money due to them.
I went to Gukovo to find out how the miners are battling with the bureaucrats, how people live in a town without work and whether there is any hope of the mines reopening.
