Kyrgyzstan: Compensation Hopes Dwindle for Ex-Miners

A decade after a major coal mine closed in south-west Kyrgyzstan, 100 former miners who were disabled or suffered health problems as a result of the work say they feel forgotten. As they struggle to get the compensation they are due, only half the claimants are still alive.

The Leninsky Komsomol mine in Batken region was shut down in 1995 under the World Bank-funded PESAK programme to restructure and privatise viable state concerns and close the rest. The process was overseen by then prime minister Apas Jumagulov, dubbed the “Great Liquidator” for his part in the closures.

Seven hundred metres down, the mine was one of the deepest in the world. In Soviet times, the nearby town of Kyzyl Kiya was known as “Central Asia’s furnace-room” because production was so high here.

The workers, however, called it the “Second Front” because injuries and health problems were so widespread.

When it was closed, the mine company should have been issued with state funding equivalent to its asset value at the time, to allow it to deal with liabilities including welfare payments.

It appears inadequate sums of money were made available for pensions, benefits and injury compensation. Turdukan Soltonova, a staff member at the Social Fund for Kyzyl Kiya, says that under bankruptcy law, these payments must be honoured before anything else.

Soltonova says the company was assessed at 21 million soms (over 130,000 US dollars), but she only saw documentation for four million. None of that money was handed over to her benefits agency to make these payments, and it was used instead to pay insurance claims.

Mine company managers told those claiming compensation that they should have been paid out of the PESAK programme.

In 1996, men who had had to retire on health grounds were paid some compensation, but this covered only the mine’s final year in operation and was calculated from the minimum national pension even though the law said it should have been based on average wages.

Eleven years later, after the miners brought a claim against the municipal Social Fund to court and lost, the Kyrgyz government took it upon itself to pay the compensation, still based on pension rates, but with an additional amount added to offset inflation in the time that had elapsed.

Mamat Teshebaev, now 80, heads the Regress group that brought the claim – miners with industrial injuries are called “regressniks” in Russian – and is unhappy that compensation continues to be set at the same level as pensions.

Worse still, only about half of the total amount of compensation due has actually been paid out between 1995 and 2010.

“The compensation we get is less than the pension of a cleaner, who receives about 2,000 soms [45 dollars a month]. We receive an average of 800 soms, and that includes money for medical treatment,” said Teshebaev. “There are some who can’t walk, and every week one of us needs hospital treatment.”

Regress member, Bakyt Joroev, says from the Regress foundation, says many will not live to receive the money they are due.

“Our list has been reduced by half. We’re under pressure from [officials]. The state first issues laws and decrees and then breaks them,” he said. “There are only 100 of us left.”

At 45, Joroev is the youngest member of Regress. When a 120-kilogram hook broke loose and struck him on the head in 1991, doctors said he would not survive. After recovering, he had to come back to hospital to reclaim his ID papers from the archives, where he was officially recorded as deceased

The miners are unhappy that even while their claim remains unresolved, other benefits are being withdrawn.

In January, the Kyrgyz government abolished subsidies for electricity, public transport, and other items, which has hit low-income groups like the disabled miners. At one time, the Batken regional government gave the miners money to buy coal for heating, but this has gone as well. Last year, they did not get the food packages normally handed out on Disabled People Day and Elderly People Day.

To add insult to injury, this year they did not even receive the official congratulations they normally get on Disabled People Day and Elderly People Day.

“It’s shameful. No one remembers us – not the mayor’s office or anyone else,” said a former miner. “Everyone has forgotten about us.”.

(This report was compiled on interviews gathered before Kyrgyzstan’s present government came to power.)

Mira Tuuraeva is the pseudonym of a journalist in Batken province

This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either the European Union or the Foreign Ministry of Norway.