10 million EUR to navy shipyards in Murmansk
The Russian Ministry of Defence has paid Murmansk shipyards all outstanding debts, Russian Minister of Defence Anatoly Serdyukov says in a letter to Murmansk Oblast Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko.
According to Serdyukov, the ministry has paid for all defence contracts for 2009 as well as lags from earlier finished work – in all more nearly 10 million EUR, a press release from the Murmansk Oblast Government reads.
The regional government believes the transfer comes as an answer to a letter Dmitriyenko sent to Serdyukov in April, where he appealed that urgent measures should be taken to help the region’s eight state enterprises fulfilling defence contracts.
Last month the ministry allocated nearly one million EUR to the Northern Fleet as payment for earlier fulfilled orders by the fleet’s shipyards. That transfer was made only two days before a planned protest meeting in Murmansk that attracted several hundred workers, BarentsObserver reported. Employees at several of the region’s state shipyards had not been paid wages for months and has started taking out on the streets to protest.
