Hundreds of miners protesting in Jiului Valley. They refuse to get out from underground for not getting their wages

About 100 miners from the Lupeni mine have blocked themselves underground in protest for not getting their salaries, while other few hundreds are protesting in the mine’s courtyard, asking for their outstanding remuneration. Mintia Power station has stopped its activity on Thursday night due to the lack of coal, and the houses, apartments and institutions offices in Deva ran out of heating.

Miners in Livezi mine have also refused to get out from the underground today.

The leaders of the Miners Trade Union in Jiului Valley is meeting today Energy Minister, Virgil Popescu.

Trade unionists have some claims to hand out to the Energy minister: they ask for the resignation of Hunedoara Energy Complex managers, they ask for their salaries to be paid in two tranches every 15th and 30th days of the month, they also want to receive their meal vouchers past due for 10 months and the transport tickets which they also haven’t received for 11 months.

“The outstanding remuneration of our employees on the transport to work mount to RON 2 million, the meal vouchers are RON 8 M. The past due salaries total RON 8 million. So, the need today is for RON 18 M, to solve all problems”, said the general manager of Hunedoara Energy Complex, Samuel Dioane.

CEH remained without part of the revenues on January 1, 2021 after having lost RON 7 million on a monthly basis, representing the sums of money out of the system services and state aids for Lonea Mine. The CEH officials said that these sums provided for around half of the money for the salaries.

Hunedoara prefect Călin Petru Marian told Digi24, that the Government will try to pay the miners by February 26. Yet the miners refused the delay and started protesting, with 100 of them blocking themselves underground 48 hours ago.