Splendour and Misery of the Kazakh “Black Diamonds”

cabar.asia

Photoreport: Splendour and Misery of the Kazakh "Black Diamonds"

by Oleg Bitner

Karaganda is one of the largest coal-mining regions in Kazakhstan. There are about 32 thousand miners in the region. For many years, the region is one of three regions with the biggest number of workplace injuries, as reported by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population.

Note:
Recourse payments are payments by employer to miners under a recourse claim. They are calculated as a percentage of an average income. The employer compensates the damage caused to his employee, who developed health condition as a result of injuries or occupational diseases (usually – silicosis, hand-arm vibration syndrome, osteochondrosis).

The miners, receivers of the recourse payments, may continue to work in the mine, but due to the health condition, they can work either in support facilities or on the surface. Occasionally, in order to save money, they are forced to either quit the job, or transfer to a low-paying job.

Tolegen Beysembek, a former miner of the Kuzembayev mine in Karaganda region of Kazakhstan, is now 58. He began his career as a miner and, after receiving the college education, became mine foreman. He worked underground for 17 years and, perhaps, would still work there, but in 2006, an accident occurred. The winching machine caught the miner's leg and pulled out a part of it.

After two complex surgeries, he spent almost six months in a hospital. However, even after the injury, Tolegen Beysembek had to work, since the employer claimed that if he took three sick leaves a year, he would be fired.

After undergoing an independent medical examination in the capital, he proved that he was injured during work, and the employer had to admit his guilt. The miner believes that the reason for his health condition is the cost-saving policy of the employer, who, considering a lack of equipment, reduced the number of workers per shift. Thus, the miners working in the tunnel performed the additional work of several absent miners. The underground miner's shift was 6 hours, with a shift change every three days.

personal archive of T. Beysembek

The changes also affected the provision of health resort treatment, which was previously available to receivers of recourse payments free of charge. Now, Beysembek is offered to pay for a part of the resort treatment himself.

The former miner also complains about the miner's healthcare centre, which is now transferred to private management. According to him, the doctors were ordered to minimize the number of diagnoses inconvenient for the company. Because of this, the miners have to go to other medical institutions for an independent examination. To prove his real diagnosis, Beysembek had to go to the capital's Scientific Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedics.

"Here, in Karaganda, after the examination, they told me that I was doing well and that I had no serious health issues. In Nur-Sultan, all my diagnoses were confirmed. Many of my colleagues do not live until retirement. Well, if someone was lucky and lived until the retirement age, then all his health remains in the mine. Hernias, protrusions, lung diseases… it is not for nothing that the work experience of underground miners did not exceed 25 years before," says the former miner. "Now, I live in constant pain, I get three times less from the average salary of a miner, and at the same time, I have to spend a lot of money to buy the medicines."

Until 2013, Tolegen lived in Karaganda. Once, the miners with disabilities gathered outside the building of the coal department of "Arcelor Mittal Temirtau" to demand the payment of the funds. One of the former miners, threatening to commit suicide, threw a Molotov cocktail on the floor. It was Vladimir Zaryanov, a desperate worker with disabilities, angry about non-payment of benefits. Tolegen stood next to him and, after that case, became a constant object of attention of prosecutors. Then, he decided to move from the regional center to the satellite town.

"I feel safer here," he says.

Coal: Past and Present

In Karaganda area, the coal began to be mined in the middle of the 19^th century. The coal was mainly required for the production of copper. Coal mining in the open steppe was not easy; the mines were preserved and reopened again.

The industrialisation of Kazakhstan in the 1930s gave a new impetus to coal mining. The Karaganda coal basin was declared an all-Union construction site. Miners (mostly, repressed citizens of the USSR) arrived from all parts of the country. For them, the cottages were built of clay not far from the mine. In 1934, the mining villages of Maikuduk, Tikhonovka and Prishakhtinsky were united, and received the status of a city – Karaganda.

Before the collapse of the USSR, working in the mine was considered prestigious. Decent salaries and numerous benefits, including early retirement, attracted people from all educational backgrounds to the industry. Numerous colleges trained specialists, and highly qualified professional workers, engineers, and technicians graduated from the polytechnic institute.

The collapse of the economy in 90s led to the drop in demand for coal. The mine workers did not receive their salaries for months; in 1996, the government sold the best mines to the foreign company – currently named JSC "Arcelor Mittal Temirtau" (AMT). The new owner took the responsibility to pay back the debts, regularly pay salaries to mine workers and people with disabilities under recourse claims.

According to the Bureau of National Statistics, in 2019, the number of mine workers in Karaganda region amounted to 32,750, while the number of people receiving recourse payments was about 10,000.

For many years, Karaganda region is one of three regions with the biggest number of workplace injuries, as reported by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population.

Exhausted Human Resources

фото 2006 г.

Pavel Shumkin is Karaganda native, former miner, social activist and the veteran of miners' protest movement since 1989. Shumkin is among the few leaders who did not lose their authority among peer miners. He fights for miners' rights, took part in hunger strikes, was arrested on multiple occasions while leading the miners' protests.

He was awarded "Miners' Glory Medal" of the Russian Federation, was recognised as the honourable member of the "Nevada – Semey" movement, has "Jubilee Medal of 20^th Anniversary of the miners' strikes". He was awarded with the statuette of St. Barbara (protectress of miners in Germany). He is an honourable citizen of Tulsa (Oklahoma, USA), Louisville (Kentucky, USA).

Still, in Kazakhstan, he receives only the lowest pension – in 2021, it was 43,000 tenge ($101). With additional social benefits, Shumkin receives 71,000 tenge ($166.76).

In 1997, he started collecting documents for applying for pension (by the time, he already had 22 years of non-stop underground working experience). However, according to the new rules, he was told that he could retire only after 13 years. These were challenging years for the former miner, who had to care for his sick mother with disabilities.

Shumkin does not like to recall that time. First, he had no money at all, then he was given the beggarly pension. When he was applying for a long-awaited pension in 2010, it turned out that it will be minimal. As a result, the miner with almost 50 years of working experience in mining industry, including social work, became another victim of reforms in labour legislation.

"The authorities do not need the miners' support and take side of the employers, pushing all the exhausted resources – former miners – into poverty. It is impossible to explain such a discrimination of industry workers by other means. For example, the police officers retire almost 20 years before miners, but receive a way larger pension, while having hundreds times less death cases during work," Shumkin complains.

"Production Plant of Poor People With Disabilities"

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"Before 1998, the recalculation was linked to the salary growth, but after 1999, after the adoption of the special part of the Civil Code, the "Arcelor" stopped making such recalculation. The recourse payments were pennyworth, they were indexed to the calculation indicator and did not increase. If the salary was within a range of 200,000-300,000 tenge ($479-704) at that time, my 60% of the salary amounted to 30,000 tenge ($70.46). Not agreeing to such terms, we, recourse payment receivers, united and started advocating for the amendment of the legislation, suing AMT."

Ivan Shtrek, a former miner

Ivan Shtrek is on the left

He worked at Kostenko mine underground for 20 years. He started as a wireman on the surface works in 1972, and 6 years later, began working underground.

In 1994, Ivan Shtrek was injured and hospitalized for half a year. Then, he recovered and returned to underground work. In 1998, as a miner foreman, he was to retire. Unfortunately, he did not – as a result of the amendments of the Labour Code, his retirement was postponed for 20 years. Having worked for several more years, on the surface works, Ivan realised that he could not physically cope with his tasks.

At the age of 53, Shtrek quit; he received a miserly state benefit, and unfair, in his opinion, recourse payments from "Arcelor Mittal".

United miners receiving recourse payments lost all cases in Karaganda region's courts, but won the case in the Supreme Court. Temirtau court, following the decision of the Supreme Court, ordered the set payments in addition to compensation of moral harm. Then, something unimaginable happened – the regional court cancelled the decision of Temirtau court, de-facto cancelling the decision of the Supreme Court.

However, this situation did not last long. Having seen what costs are required for the execution of recourse claims, in 2015, they adopted a law, according to which the recourse payments to workers with disabilities were terminated until their retirement age. Now, if a miner was injured 10-15 years before retirement, he has no chance to receive a decent accumulative pension, since it is created only with unfairly low benefits.

"My example also confirmed this. I, a person with disabilities, a miner with 37 years of experience in the mining industry, receive a pension slightly higher than the minimum. This is such a production plant of poor people with disabilities. Well, if the miner is lucky, and he lives until retirement age, the recourse payments will be stopped. Although, among my colleagues, I can hardly remember anyone, who, having worked in the mine until the age of 63, retired," notes Ivan Shtrek.

CABAR.asia officially addressed the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population of Kazakhstan to find out if the issue of lowering the retirement age for miners is being considered.

The Ministry responded and explained the procedure for receiving the accumulative pension by miners, consisting of a solidary, state pension, and payments from the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund (this information is known to every Kazakhstan resident) and summarized:

"Thus, reducing the retirement age to 50 for employees of the mining and metallurgical complex, who are also provided with pension contributions from the employer, will lead to insufficient pension savings upon retirement."

To the question about the possibility of returning the paragraph 6 of Article 938 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan on recalculating compensation for harm to health based on an increase in average wages (the miners with disabilities seek to return this paragraph since 2015), we received an extensive answer describing the procedure for increasing benefits in proportion to the average value of the projected level of inflation. The final statement of the answer:

"Taking into account the above, we consider it inexpedient to return paragraph 6 of Article 938 of the Civil Code."

That is, on the key problem which miners with disabilities discuss in working groups, the decision is already made and it is not in favor of people with disabilities.

We received the following response to the address to "Arcelor Mittal":

"The forecast of the socio-economic development of the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2020-2024 in terms of indexation to persons receiving compensation for harm to health has been fulfilled."

Local authorities, namely the Department for Labour Inspection of Karaganda region, conduct the meetings of working groups, where the demands and problems of former miners are discussed. These meeting do not solve systemic problems of people with disabilities, but they at least help them to meet the representatives of the former employer and ask them questions in presence of the prosecutors and other officials.

CABAR.asia journalist had an opportunity to join one of such meetings online. After hearing about it, the representative of "Arcelor Mittal" Vera Tereshkina warned the meeting participants that she would not present any figures while the journalist is present. What are these mystical figures, and why they can be presented to the meeting participants – but not to journalists, remained unclear.

In general, the impression of the meeting does not give ground for an optimism. It is clear that the issue of fair recourse payments will not be resolved on the level of parliament, and that the employers are not likely to make any steps towards the people with disabilities.