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25 April, 2006Forgotten Workers Inside Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone
Twenty years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, some 4,000 workers employed in the contamination exclusion zone regularly face non-payment of wages, lack of funding for equipment, clothing and other essentials, and general disregard by Ukrainian government authorities.
ICEM affiliate Atomprofspilka, the Nuclear Power Workers’ Union of Ukraine, represents most workers inside the zone, and continually is drawn to the needs and grievances of workers of the different enterprises operating in the 30-kilometre exclusion zone.
Earlier this year, workers at the government-operated EcoCentre—the agency charged with monitoring radiation levels and other hazards—declared a labour dispute when wages went unpaid. At another enterprise, ChernobylService, funding is virtually non-existent for special clothing and even soap and detergents for the 1,350 workers.
Nikolai Teterin, a member of Atomprofspika’s Executive Committee, believes the central tenet to current problems is that the Ukrainian government has adopted no work plan for the zone. He says all budgets and proposals put forward by the Ministry for Emergency Situations are ignored by the Ministry of Finance. When workers employed inside the zone press their claims in court, the Cabinet of Ministers contests each case filed.
“This is characteristic of the government’s attitude on the problems inside the exclusion zone 20 years following the disaster,” said Teterin. “We maintain the infrastructure in its normal condition and make sure that radionuclides do not get beyond the zone. We monitor the water bodies, the forest, yet the situation is that qualified and dedicated specialists are leaving because they cannot afford to work for miniscule wages, which are not even paid on time."
In the morning of 26 April 1986, a loss of coolant inside Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 forced the reactor power to increase several times the normal maximum causing a massive explosion. The 100-ton reactor lid blew into the sky, and for nine days after, fire raged.
But in the years that followed, particularly with the break-up of the Soviet Union in other nation-states, little was done in the way of social protections and ensuring the necessary infrastructure for Ukrainian workers.
For the enterprises inside the exclusion zone, the process is the same each year, according to Gennady Mikhailuk, deputy president of the Chernobyl territorial union organisation. “We try to prove to the state what is needed and exactly what tasks must be done,” he said. “The only funding that comes arrives from whatever is left from other expenditures, and that is very little.”
Nikolai Novgorodsky, the workplace leader at the TechnoCentre, “We have been writing about all our problems to zone management, but one gets the feeling they just don’t hear us up there.”
A 1991 law protecting the life standards of those working inside the zone, as well as citizens who were victimised by the disaster, was suppose to provide adequate financial support to exist in the zone. But the financial support inside the law has simply eroded, said Atomprofspilka’s Chairman of the Workplace Conveners Council Sergei Budyansky. For example, proper nutritional and dietary care was intended for employees forced to work inside the contaminated zone. The meal stipend today for three daily meals is stuck at 6.26 Gryvnas, equivalent to € 1.
“Now, is that adequate money to provide meals to people who do physically hard work, in the open air, in a territory that is contaminated with radionuclides?” asks Budyansky.
ICEM General Secretary Fred Higgs has visited Chernobyl twice in recent years. The ICEM has been a leading global advocate for a two-prong response to the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. One was for international financial institutions and the world community, after the closure of the plant in year 2000, to come to the assistance of Ukraine to develop new power sources. The other is to ensure a comprehensive solution to the social problems of personnel in and around the facility.
“It is quite clear that the social provisions of workers employed inside the 30-kilometre radius of the plant have not been met,” said Higgs. “There is far more that the Ukrainian government must do, and the international community must step up to ensure that these workers are not only fully compensated, but also treated with dignity and provided with the maximum possible protection.”