You're reading: Chornobyl cleanup workers announce indefinite protest in Luhansk

LUHANSK – Chornobyl cleanup workers have announced an indefinite protest in Luhansk, the chairman of the regional branch of the Chornobyl-86 union of Chornobyl cleanup workers with disabilities, Oleksiy Demchenko, told Interfax-Ukraine.

The protesters put up six tents in a square near the building of Luhansk Regional State Administration, he said

According to Demchenko, the protesters demand respect to “social
fairness, which doesn’t exist today.” In particular, they want that the
size of pensions to Chornobyl cleanup workers be based on the average
wages they used to receive at the time when they took part in the
cleanup operations at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).

Demchenko added that the miners that worked at the NPP after it had
been covered with the sarcophagus today receive much higher pensions
than the conscript soldiers that cleaned graphite from the NPP in the
first days after the accident. In addition, children that suffer health
problems caused by the Chornobyl accident are also deprived of their
rightful share, he said.

Some 100 people took part in the protest.