43 workers of bankrupt Baikal Paper Plant go on hunger strike

Workers of a paper production factory at Lake Baikal have gone on a hunger strike, demanding to be paid their wages. The plant had to be closed after an environmental agency demanded that it changed its production cycle.

The Baikal Pulp and Paper Plant at the moment owes its employees over 100 million rubles ($3.2 million), Russian news agencies reported Wednesday.

Altogether, forty-two former employees have refused to eat, protesting about the policies of the plant,which went bankrupt in March but failed to find enough money to pay its debts, including to employees.

Apart from the hunger strike, the protesters are planning to picket the local government building, as well as the passing by Trans-Siberian Railroad and the major M-53 highway, linking Novosibirsk to Irkutsk.

In early April the governor of the Irkutsk Region announced the Baikal Cellulose and Paper Plant would stop receiving governmental subsidies.

The decision was made after Russian state environmental protection body Rospotrebnadzor demanded that the plant switched to closed-loop water cycle to prevent pollution of Lake Baikal, one of the world’s largest fresh water lakes.

As a result, the plant’s operation became unprofitable.

The Baikal Cellulose and Paper Plant was launched in 1966 with a producing capacity of some 200,000 tons of cellulose per year.

Forty-nine percent of the plant’s shares belong to the Federal Agency for State Property Management, Rosimushchestvo, while 51 percent belong to Continental Management, a timber production controlled by BasEl.