Editor’s Note: The following is a partial transcript of an interview given by Ihor Vladimirovich Smetanin, a wagon driver at Rinat Akhmetov’s Sukhodilska-Skhidna coal mine, where at least 27 miners were killed in a methane explosion. Smetanin blames the greed of mine owners and managers for deadly working conditions.
“The coking coal costs huge money and people are expendable. They will blame the mountain master who died and all will be okay. Please show this. I know I probably have no chance for working here after this, I am now jobless, but I want you to show this.
“Yesterday I helped bringing up the dead guys to the surface. I cried half a night after this. I overheard the conversation [that] there was five percent of methane, instead of a half-percent. If there is a leak, nobody leaves. They just add some fresh air and keep working. Otherwise, you would lose your job.
"I’m paid Hr 1300 for a hellish job in the shaft, where there is a lot of coal dust and no irrigation of air.
“In wintertime, the shower has no heating. There are no robes, nothing.
“We get [used] like animals. It’s minus 30 outside. You have to wash yourself in cold water, you come out – there is no heating. Your robe gets covered with mold.
“You work so hard, you sweat really bad. If you sit down, you are out in the dump for Hr 800 a month. If you unzip you robe, you also go to the dump, or you have to pay Hr 2,000-Hr 3,000 [as a bribe] to get better treatment.
They pay kopecks and take back everything they give. I want to tell them, take my robe, take my life, my shoes. What else do you want from me? The shaft [where the accident took place] is 150 meters. Can you imagine what kind of methane concentration there is?
“But they want eight, six layers of coal from there. There is not enough money for them!
“Those girls who work picking up coal get Hr 1,000 working in this dust.
“I saw those dead guys. They had no shoes. One was missing half a head. I worked the whole day, but in the evening I collapsed and cried till three in the morning. I never cried at anyone’s funeral. I am really sorry for them as a human. Really sorry.
“And they died because [they tell us] ‘Come on! Faster! Give us coal output. Give us new shaft! Give us millions!’ Do you understand? This is it.
“My name is Smetanin Ihor Vladimirovich. I have worked here for three years.”
VIDEO: Ihor Smetanin comments on the blast at Sukhodilska-Skhidna coal mine
Read also ‘Deadly Greed’ and ‘Akhmetov statement’
