‘We still cannot understand why we have been getting such strange assessment of the enterprise and its managers’ activity from Sverdlovsk Region Government. We have to declare that a whole range of claims made at the administration’s latest anti-crisis committee meeting are simply not true,’ reports Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Enterprise.

What happened at the meeting (chaired by Governor Eduard Rossel) was that the plant’s management’s actions were criticized bitterly by the government officials. For one, they disapproved of the prospective 6,000 layoffs, of the company’s only working at 50% of its capacity, and of the lack of civil produce orders. They also claimed that the company would soon have to close down its corporate university and that General Director Oleg Sienko had no recession-fighting action plan.

‘Making 6,000 people redundant this year is totally out of the question. We won’t even lay off our design department workers,’ says Uralvagonzavod’s Counselor to GD Evgeniy Roshkov.

‘Our company insists on seeing cadre retention and avoidance of layoffs as its top priorities. We do want all sort of agiotage to stop,’ he notes.