Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin demanded in the course of the recent meeting with heads of the region’s municipalities that all the wage arrears should be eliminated within a week. All in all, the regional enterprises’ debt to their own workers had reached 102.8 million RUR by June 1, 2009, with thirty-four companies owing money to 7,800 employees. The Governor feels this isn’t an overwhelming sum on the regional level, so each and every of the debtor enterprises must be handled individually.

‘You’re actually protecting your pockets and not the people. If we don’t protect them, no one will! So let the debtors take a loan from a bank or sell their assets, in any case, the workers must be paid,’ he said to the local mayors.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has gone down from 3.8% in April 2009 to 3.6% in June, with the number of jobless dropping down to 66,212 people. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Sumin suggested that the mayors should focus more on the employment centers and the management of local companies. He reminded them of the provision that states all the large-scale redundancies must be coordinated with the district or municipal anti-crisis committee. Finally, the Governor made it clear to the heads of municipalities that they were personally responsible for the state of events in their respective towns.