ZAGREB, March 1 (Hina) - Croatia's economy minister on Saturday called on trade unions to exert pressure on the Russian company Mechel and ask it to meet the required criteria so that a contract on the sale of the Sisak Ironworks may
become effective.
ZAGREB, March 1 (Hina) - Croatia's economy minister on Saturday
called on trade unions to exert pressure on the Russian company
Mechel and ask it to meet the required criteria so that a contract on
the sale of the Sisak Ironworks may become effective. #L#
"As the preservation of jobs is the same goal which (the government)
and the unions have, I call on the unions to exert pressure on the
Russian side in order that it may fulfil the required conditions so
that the sales contract can come into effect and the government pay
overdue salaries to workers," Minister Ljubo Jurcic was quoted as
saying in a statement released by his ministry on Saturday.
The ministry added that it was expecting such pressure from the
workers given that "they have put similar pressure on the
government to accept talks and a contract, which was not acceptable
at the start, with the Russian side."
The ministry would like the sale of the Sisak Ironworks to succeed
and that "Mechel" provide Zagreb with a proper bank guarantee for
the purchase of the Sisak plant so that it might restart production
as soon as possible and that workers might get salaries for
January.
The ministry asserted that the bank guarantee which the Russian
side had provided was not payable in case of the termination of the
contract.
On Friday Jurcic briefed Russia's Ambassador to Zagreb, Eduard
Leonidovich Kuzmin, on those problems.
The co-ordinator of the bankruptcy proceedings in the Sisak
Ironworks on Friday evening did not allow representatives of Mechel
and its subsidiary Conares Balkan to enter the premises of this
plant in Sisak (some 50 kilometres south-east of Zagreb), and thus
made it impossible for workers and Conares Balkan to start
production of steel in one of the factory's furnaces. In front of
the main entrance to the ironworks' premises, the co-ordinator
Blanka Anducic-Oresic handed over to the Conares Balkan director a
written notice banning his entering the plant and on the restart of
production, justifying this decision with the stand of the Croatian
government and Minister Jurcic that the sales contract has not yet
taken effect. She also cited a decision of the committee of the
ironworks' creditors that no production should be initiated in the
plant, due to the possibility of accumulating huge losses, as long
as the process of bankruptcy was going on.
(hina) ms