Kremikovtzi workers announced they will protest on January 23 from 8.00am in front of the central management office of the company. Organisers of the protest were the unions KT Pokrepa and KNSB in the steelmill, zagrada.bg said.

Unions complained that the workers in the mill did not receive their salaries regularly. They wanted the State, who owned 25 per cent of the company, to cancel the deal with majority stakeholder Pramod Mital from India, zagrada.bg said. Unions accused Pramod Mital of not investing in the mill and exposing it to the risk of being closed down because it did not meet ecological requirements.

Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov said that the State was holding an audit of Kremikovtzi and wanted to make the company economically healthy and meet ecological requirements. Dimitrov said he was against closing the mill, as Sofia's mayor Boiko Borissov proposed.

Ecology Minister Djevdet Chakurov said that he was not happy with the work of the management of the company. "The mill received permits to operate under the condition that it would meet legal requirements. How is it possible that all companies in the branch can work within the norms, except Kremikovtzi who have done nothing and are damaging a city of more than two million," Chakurov said.

"For the two-and-a-half years that I have been minister, I have not seen any progress at the mill," he said.

Source: Zagrada.bg
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