Firefighters who extinguished forests are preparing to go on strike

As Kommersant learned, more than 100 Avialeskhrana employees who participated in extinguishing forest fires were left in Tomsk without the remuneration due to them. This summer, the Tomsk region became one of the hottest spots in the fight against fire: Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered the deployment of additional forces from the Ministry of Emergency Situations here in July. In addition, in 2012, the government allocated a record 12 billion rubles to fight forest fires in the Russian Federation, but firefighters never saw this money. They are going to complain about employers to the prosecutor's office and are ready for any protest actions, including a strike.

During the summer season, the Tomsk region became one of the most problematic regions in Russia (see Kommersant on August 4). According to official data, in August alone, 8 thousand hectares of forest burned in the region, and local firefighters told Kommersant that this figure was underestimated by at least three times. In the region, by decree of the local government, a state of emergency was introduced and visits to forests were limited. Soon, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, noting that local authorities were not coping with the assigned tasks, instructed the Ministry of Emergency Situations to transfer heavy aircraft and additional rescue crews to the Tomsk region. By the beginning of autumn, with the establishment of cold and wet weather in the region, the situation had stabilized a little. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, about 800 hectares of forest are currently burning in the region. However, according to representatives of Rosleskhoz, the emergency regime is still in force in at least four districts of the region.

Regional aviation security departments ("Avialeskhrana"), which are part of the structures of Rosleskhoz, are responsible for extinguishing forests. They were the ones who put out fires across the country this summer. As representatives of Avialeskhrana noted, the situation with forest fires in 2012 was close to critical. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the area of forest fires that have broken out in the Russian Federation since the beginning of the fire-hazardous period is already 30% higher than in 2011 and amounts to about 2 million hectares. However, many of them are located in hard-to-reach areas. Let us recall that on June 6, eight employees of Avialeskhrana, who were parachuted into a fire in the Bai-Taiginsky district of Tuva, were unable to escape from the emergency zone and burned alive.

The Russian government has kept the situation with fires under special control since 2010, when due to abnormal heat in 22 regions, more than 1 thousand houses burned down and 53 people died. In 2011, funding for fire safety in forestry was increased fivefold (RUB 11 billion), and in 2012, funding for fire prevention measures amounted to RUB 12 billion. However, as employees of the Tomsk branch of Avialeskhrana told Kommersant, who asked not to give their names, since the end of spring they have been participating in multi-day business trips to extinguish forest fires, so far they have not received the allowances due to them for any of the eliminated fires. “Our salary is based on a minimum salary of ten thousand rubles and bonuses for extinguished fires. They are calculated from the number of hours spent on the fire, its area, the area where we extinguished the fire, the complexity of the fire. We were not given money for any of the fires we extinguished, and they never actually gave out travel allowances,” says one of the firefighters. According to his calculations, management owes each of the more than 100 firefighters up to 100 thousand rubles. Management, he says, explained that the airbase did not transfer the contribution to the Pension Fund on time and its accounts were frozen. “Last week our boss told us: “Go on your last business trip, and by October you’ll have the money.” As a result, we went without money and had to buy some of the ammunition ourselves. Now we’re preparing a statement to the prosecutor’s office,” say the firefighters.

Yesterday, the director of the Tomsk regional branch of Avialeskhrana, Viktor Makhotin, in a conversation with Kommersant, admitted the existence of a debt. “There are wage arrears for extinguishing forest fires, but only for August. To resolve this issue, on August 21, the governor of the Tomsk region, Sergei Zhvachkin, wrote a letter to the head of Rosleskhoz, Viktor Maslyukov, asking for funding in the amount of 100 million rubles,” explained Mr. Makhotin. According to him, about 240 people took part in extinguishing fires in the region. As the director of the Tomsk forest protection base explained, the debt could have arisen due to the difficulty in registering fires. “The number of fires is very large, the accounting department cannot cope with the registration of allowances,” says Mr. Makhotin.

If contacting the prosecutor's office does not help, firefighters are ready to take extreme measures, including a strike.

Grigory Tumanov; Yuri Belov, Novosibirsk

"Avialesohrana" missed the money