04 June 2004 17:58
Russian region starts crackdown on bosses who don`t pay wages
[Presenter] The Prosecutor-General's Office thinks it is essential that company bosses should be made to
understand that they will have to answer for delaying wages. These delays often reach six months and more even at
profitable private enterprises. Our correspondent reports from Nizhniy Novgorod Region.
[Correspondent] Pickets at the entrance to the Poisk company. The last time wages were distributed here was in
December last year.
[Passage omitted: employee complains of lack of money]
Today is the latest meeting between the workforce and the management. Here is the managing director arriving in his
Jeep with darkened windows.
[Passage omitted: director says there will be no wages today]
The employees here are owed R7.5m.
[Passage omitted: angry employee asking question in meeting]
Once again the management tries to explain why the company, with a profitable business in construction - they make
concrete building blocks here - has come to the brink of bankruptcy.
[Passage omitted: more angry employees]
The (?Stovskiy) construction materials factory is one of the companies where the Prosecutor-General's Office has
already instituted criminal proceedings.
[Vyacheslav Igoshin, head of the investigation supervision department of the Nizhniy Novgorod regional branch of the
Prosecutor-General's Office] The case has been brought over the nonpayment of salaries. We will check whether the
management of the company is guilty, and if this is proven to be the case we will press charges.
[Passage omitted: another factory had a R50m salary debt built up over six months last year, but the new managers are
dealing with it]
Across the Region as a whole it was established during checks by the Prosecutor-General's Office that there were
delays in the payment of salaries at 682 companies. Active investigations of their bosses are now under way, and new
criminal cases are not ruled out.
[Channel One TV] |
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