Press Release, 7.04.2020

The Chelyabinsk branch of Yabloko called on Alexei Teksler, Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, to ensure compliance with the sanitary-epidemiological measures by the collectives of industrial enterprises the region is rich with.

Yabloko activists note that key industrial enterprises of the Chelyabinsk region resume or continue their work, but their employees do not have personal protective equipment. Moreover, there were no checks how enterprises observe sanitary and epidemiological standards at the majority of factories and plants.

“We demand to conduct an urgent check of compliance with the sanitary norms at industrial enterprises, as well as provide enterprises’ transport for workers at night, when public transport does not work. We also demand to allow employees whose children can not attend kindergarten groups stay at home,” said Yaroslav Shcherbakov, Chairman of the Chelyabinsk regional branch of the Yabloko party.

The most alarming situation developed in the city of Miass, where after the resumption of work at the Ural automobile plant, its workers were forced to get to the plant in crowded mini-buses, since the city has a reduced mode of operation of transport. The company’s management also allows crowded queues at the checkpoints of the automobile plant. According to the workers, they should have been given medical masks, but they the managers said that the masks would be changed only once in ten days, despite the fact that the regional pharmacy warehouse should get five million masks shortly.

A similar situation has developed at the Chelyabinsk Pipe-Rolling Plant, the Chelyabinsk Mechanical Plant, and the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant.

In addition, the equipment for measuring the body temperature of workers has not yet been purchased at the Kopeysk Machine-Building Plant. Moreover, the workers of the plant complain that they do not have a possibility to bring their children to the few functioning on-duty groups of kindergartens.