05 May 2004 11:05
Russian wage arrears stand at R25.8bn - paper
The chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, Mikhail Shmakov, has said that over 5m people in Russia
are not receiving wages and wage arrears have reached R28bn. Who are these people?
The Federal State Statistics Service has corrected the figures slightly. First, the wage arrears stand at R25.8bn and
not R28bn. In the past month they fell by over R2bn. Second, there are 4.4m people who are not receiving wages.
Admittedly, this is also a big figure: one in eight Russians is working for free.
"Ninety per cent of the debts are the debts of commercial enterprises. There are virtually no budget
arrears," the deputy head of the labour statistics directorate told AiF. "Who are these people? Twenty-one per
cent are budget workers, 29 per cent work in industry and 36 per cent work in agriculture."
In agriculture, wages are delayed on average for over a month and in other branches of the economy for several
days.
"According to our estimates, at least half of existing wage arrears are irretrievable," the chief labour
inspector, Vladimir Varov, told AiF. "Businessmen set up transient companies, grabbed the money and disappeared.
Who will pay their debts? We don't know."
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