“Daddy, come back home!” Despite the filth on the walls the touching message of the little girl on the billboard is hard to overlook. Her words, however, conjure up a dark world - that of the fathers swallowed by Ukrainian coal mines...
“Daddy, come back home!” The touching message of the little girl on the billboard makes a contrast with the filth on the walls. Her golden hair, the flowers and her traditional costume recall Ukrainian tales. Her words, however, conjure up a much darker world - that of the fathers swallowed by Ukrainian coal mines. These mines being the most dangerous in the world, according to the World Bank.
A strange reputation for a country on the way to modernization, still, the harsh statistics and explosions of methane have regularly made Ukraine mourn for its miners for years. Every million ton of extracted coal is believed to cost the lives of “one and a half miners”. Since the independence of Ukraine more than 5,000 of them have paid with their lives for the repercussions of a sector in crisis.
Its decline began in the 80-ies, when the heavy industry, the forefront of Stalin ideology, was getting old and had trouble with restructuring at the twilight of the Cold War. With its industrial traditions, rich resources and an educated population, had become one of the industrial and technological centers of the former Soviet Union. But the collapse of communism with its turbulent transition to a new economic system has hit the Ukrainian coal industry hard.
This industry struggles to adapt, but often lags behind the economic changes. The gloss surrounding the coal miner, inspired by the famous Soviet hero Stakhanov, has tarnished. The black Ukrainian faces feel abandoned. The young Ukrainian State has inherited a delayed-action bomb, for the coal industry is falling apart owing to debts and it is losing a lot of money.
Being put on a drip, it survives thanks to meager government subsidies. This is the only prevention of an outright collapse but it remains insufficient, though, to restructure and modernize the dilapidated coal mines with their decreasing efficiency and competitiveness.
In such conditions privatization of the sector is being delayed, while the production of Ukrainian coal, the 9th highest in the world, has dropped since the independence of the country.
Despite the closure of the least profitable coal mines, it is difficult to handle a sector as important in the country’s life, with its 500,000 workers and a slowed-down economy.
The miners are trapped in a vicious circle. They are forced to live in insecurity at some 250 US dollars salary often coming with delays lasting for months, even years. Trade unions have a significant number of members, but in fact, they have no real power decision. In view of the emergency requiring to reform the coal industry in Ukraine, the corrupt and oligarchical authorities during Kuchma’s 10-year regime reacted by half measures and left Yushchenko a disastrous situation as a legacy.
In Chervonohrad, a colliery town of 80, 000 people, founded after World War II in Western Ukraine, the activity of the ten remaining working mines is less important than that in Donbas, which is the largest coal region in Europe with its 200 mines. Amidst a sense of powerlessness and bitterness, Chervonohrad miners share the same worries as their fellow workers in Donetsk or Luhansk. They envy the more modern mines of their Polish neighbour and they fear that their home town may slowly die. But above all, they fear for their lives, while the victims’ list is getting longer year after year. Creating an illusion, the iconography of the miners’ glory is still alive here and there. The blackened faces lined with fatigue remain attached to the miners’ world, but they cannot be duped into believing that all is well.
© Cyril Horiszny
