According to news from the Kavkaz-Uzel website, workers from Spetsstroya (the Federal Agency for Special Construction) in Chechnya have not received their salaries for the last four months.

“During the last four months, they have not paid our salaries. We are always fed with promises that pay is coming next week. Nobody knows anything, because authorities do not express anything and people are afraid of asking,” says Akhmed, an employee of Spetsstroya in Chechnya.

Another worker told the Kavkaz-Uzel correspondent that “if it had happened in Russia, then the authorities would be punished (under the Russian law ‘Article 145.1 of the Criminal Code’ which is about the responsibility of paying salaries). But we are in Chechnya, justice like that will never happen here”.

According to him they cannot receive their salaries, but authorities still demand that they pay their gas and electricity bills.

Only a few days before, Ali Bolat, who had visited Chechnya with a delegation from Turkey, wrote an article about his travels on the Caucasus Chechen Cultural Association website and in it, he described nice working conditions in Chechnya. He claimed that he met an Azerbaijani waiter at a restaurant who earns around 1200-1500 US dollars monthly.

Also recall that independent sources indicate that the unemployment rate is around 80% in Chechnya.

*Text was translated by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco