Moldova Railway Workers Threaten Mass Protests if Their Wages Are Not Paid Out

They complain that they have not received their salaries for July and the debt is more than 160 million lei. On the verge of despair, some 900 employees have quit in search of permanent paid employment over the past year. “If the situation is not resolved by February, I think there will be mass protests, pickets. Unfortunately, they do not listen to us. We are desperate, there are no young people, specialists are leaving. We have a salary of 3,500,” said Tatiana Vartic, vice-president of the Trade Union Federation of Railway Workers of Moldova, reports tv8.md. The Moldovan railway workers’ union says it has recently made numerous requests to rectify the situation, including to Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu, Prime Minister Dorin Recean and even the head of state, Maia Sandu, but to no avail. “We still hope that the country’s leadership will pay attention to railway workers and allocate some money from the state budget in 2025. So far, we haven’t seen anything, if the state doesn’t help us, we will simply go bankrupt,” says Tatiana Vartic. Last week, the railway workers met with the chairman of the parliamentary commission for budget, economy and finance, Radu Marian. The parliamentarian argues that the state could offer the company external loans on favorable terms: “We are analyzing this option now to see where we stand financially. Analyses are underway, we haven’t made a decision yet. One of the options was that the government would invest part of it in the railway infrastructure and already when the pressure on the company is reduced, they will need to take certain measures to optimize costs. This is a recurrent situation that repeats itself and is related to factors that do not depend on what we would do, and at the same time we have to realize that the budget belongs to all citizens and we have to take care of all sectors”. Due to the difficult financial situation, starting this week, the Moldova Railway cancelled two more domestic trips. These are the Chisinau - Bender and Balti - Rogojeni routes. Thus, there is currently only one active trip left in our country - from Chisinau to Ungheni. In order to pay off the salary arrears of almost 5,000 employees, the administration of the Moldova Railway had previously attracted two loans of 35 million lei each. However, the problem was solved only temporarily. Later, the company bet that it would be able to raise about 200 million lei from the sale of locomotives, old wagons and scrap metal, but the optimistic expectations were doomed in practice.