You're reading: Employees of Ukrainian Danube Navigation to rally near buildings of transport ministry and cabinet

Employees of OJSC Ukrainian Danube Navigation (Izmail, Odesa region) plan to rally near the building of the Ukrainian Transport and Communications Ministry on Jan. 16 and near the building of the Ukrainian cabinet on January 27.

The press service of the Ukrainian Danube Navigation told Interfax-Ukraine that the company’s employees also plan to ignore the upcoming presidential election if authorities did respond to their demands and did not settle the sector’s urgent problems.

The press service said that losses from servicing old vessels that are unfit to make voyages reached some UAH 40 million in 2009. The company said that authorities are not taking any steps to write the old vessels off.

According to a press release, at present four vessels of the Ukrainian Danube Navigation have been arrested abroad.

"The company has introduced a part-time operating regime, schedules for financing energy supplies have been disrupted, there is a problem with the payment of wages, and currency payments to sailors are only 50% financed," reads the report.

The company’s employees are to ask the cabinet to assess activities of First Deputy Transport and Communications Minister Vasyl Shvchenko.

Ukrainian Danube Navigation performs over 30% of the transportation on the Danube. The company’s fleet includes almost 400 self-propelled and towed river vessels, and 30 seagoing vessels.

UDN mainly delivers Ukrainian metallurgical raw materials to various customers in countries located on the Danube River.

The key clients of Ukrainian Danube Navigation are Ferrexpo, which is under control of Ukrainian businessman Kostiantyn Zhevaho, the core asset of which is Poltava Mining, and Austria’s Danube Shipping Management Service GmbH (DSMS).