“LECE” MINERS ON STRIKE

21. January 2015.

Medvedja – Around 400 miners of the lead, gold, zinc and silver mine "Lece" near Medvedja went on a general strike yesterday and demanded from the Government of Serbia a solution to the financial problems.

The workers, who have been on a paid annual leave since the New year, reached the decision to go on strike at the protest rally held in front of the administration building of the mine.

“The strike with minimal maintenance of the work process will continue until our October and November’s wages and health insurance are paid to us, so that we could have our health cards certified. The deadline for doing that is 15 days. After that we will ask to be received by the relevant ministries, as well as by the Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, because the situation is rather alarming. The company has run out of funds for financing the production", said the Heads of the Independent and Independence Trade Unions, Milic Marjanovic and Goran Dukic.

The mine is the property of the Sabac-based "Farmakom" company, the owner of which is Miroslav Bogicevic, while the “MB Trading Europe” company, which is also from Sabac, is in charge of running the production process and the paying the wages.

"MB Trading Europe" has been blocked for a longer period of time. We expected that the issue would be resolved and that production would restart on January 19 , but that didn’t happen”, Drago Bojevic, the Director, said.

Source: Blic and Coordination Body