Representatives of salary earners of the state-run enterprise “Moldova’s Railways” (CFM) protested in front of the Parliament Building and the Presidential Palace on March 4, demanding that the salary arrears since November 2020 be cleared, the company’s managers be dismissed and the trade union dues be transferred to the accounts of trade unions. The increasing of salaries is also among the demands, IPN reports.
The protesters who came from different regions of the country complained that they cannot maintain their families as they haven’t been paid salaries during several months at a time when the trains runs. They said the company would have had revenues if money hadn’t gone to the firms created under the CFM. The employees noted they go hungry to work and send their children hungry to school. Some of them have to work for 16-18 hours of 24. They don’t leave because they don’t have another job.
“We can no longer endure. It is genocide,” said the president of the Trade Union Federation of Railway Workers Ion Zaporojan. “During the last 11 years, I asked for assistance in settling the salary arrears from the ex-President of the country, Parliament and the Government, but only empty promises were made. I asked ex-President Igor Dodon to stop performing experiments on the CFM.”
Socialist MP Oleg Lipskii told the protesters that a commission was created a week ago to examine the situation at the CFM, but the problem of salary arrears cannot be solved without a functional government.
The protesters demanded that the problem of salary arrears at the CFM should be discussed in the March 4 sitting of Parliament.
PPPDA MP Alexandru Slusari informed the protesters that last October he asked ex-Premier Ion Chicu to become involved in solving the problems faced by the CFM. He daily receives hundreds of messages from employees of the CFM, who complain that they go hungry to work as they don’t get their pays on time. An anti-crisis plan should be implemented and the enterprise’s manages should be replaced.
Attending the protest, Petru Chiriac, vice president of the National Confederation of Trade Unions, said he is near the railway workers and agrees to be a member of the commission that will examine the situation at the CFM. There are many laws in Moldova, but they do not work in favor of the working people.
Protesters’ demands will be submitted to Parliament Speaker Zinaida Grechanyi, President Maia Sandu, the State Labor Inspectorate and the Public Services Agency.
The CFM has about 7,000 employees whose average pay is 4,000 lei.
