Civil servants in Chechnya dissatisfied with mandatory subbotnik

The Chechen authorities have decided to extend the city subbotnik by ten days. This initiative is negatively met by employees of state budget organizations. Chechen functionaries prefer to "pay off".

On June 28, the Chechen leadership announced the extension of the subbotnik for cleaning the city of Grozny from rubbish and domestic waste, which was to end today, by the same period. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov explains the extension of the subbotnik by the fact that not all sectors into which Grozny was divided managed to fully implement the plans to clean the streets.

"A ten-day subbotnik involving virtually all employees of state budget organizations is, to put it mildly, not entirely correct. The main work suffers from this. But extending the event for ten days more is utter nonsense", comments the employee of a republic's ministry.

"For ten days, from morning till late evening we have been cleaning the streets of Grozny instead of doing our work", says Vakha, employee of the Chechen Ministry of Emergencies. "Now they say that they are going to deduct five thousand rubles from our salary because Ramzan Kadyrov promised to repair the roofs and fences for the families which can not afford doing it themselves. I understand that people in need must be helped but why do it at our expense? One may think that we are slaves here. Not only they make us work without pay, they arbitrarily deprive us of our salaries. People are dissatisfied but they keep silent because they fear consequences".

Note that participation in the subbotnik is mandatory for all citizens, starting from rank-and-file workers up to the minister. Refusal to take part in the subbotnik by employees of ministries and departments may entail punishment, including dismissal. According to the information of a number of local NGOs, several employees of the Pension Fund, who failed to participate in the event, have lost their jobs. The PF itself provides no comment on the information.

Taking this into account, many functionaries and mid-level managers prefer to "pay off" a certain amount (from 500 to 1000 rubles per day), hiring young people who work instead of them cleaning the city streets.