KEMEROVO, August 28 (Itar-Tass) — The Kemerovo Region marks this Sunday the main regional holiday – Miners’ Day. The small mining city of Kaltan with a population of 30,000, located 300 kilometers from Kemerovo, has become the capital for celebrating Miners’ Day this year in the Kuznetsk coal basin (Kuzbass for short, situated in the Kemerovo Region).
Governor of the Kemerovo Region Aman Tuleyev told reporters on Sunday that more than 1.3 billion rubles were channeled to prepare festivities in Kaltan. These funds were used to build and put into order 90 important facilities of housing and social spheres of the city. Money was channeled to repair highways, bridges, to tidy up backyards, and the first circular crossroad appeared at the entrance to the city.
“The main regional holiday has been celebrated for the 11th year running in various mining cities. This helps to collect all forces and improve areas: to tore down dilapidated housing, to resettle people to new comfortable homes and to settle problems, piling up by decades,” Tuleyev noted.
According to the governor, Kuzbass now invests 10 US dollars in each ton of coal (four dollars on average in Russia), “that is, the region does not, virtually, lag behind leading coal powers in investments”.
“This helps to build advanced enterprises on mining and processing coal as well as to create new jobs. Four coal enterprises have been put into operation this year alone thanks to such large investments; another two will be built by the year-end,” he added.
Tuleyev noted that starting from 2000, the Kuzbass coal industry lured over 300 billion rubles of investments, built 22 mines, 21 open-cuts and 14 agglomeration factories as well as created 23,000 jobs. Volumes of coal-mining are also on the rise: 190 million tons of coal are planned to be recovered by the results of the current year; Kuzbass miners have not achieved such a result through the entire history of the coal industry.
It is expected that the Kuznetsk Basin will boast 26 teams which will produce one million tons of coal this year, while three of them will mine three and more million tons of coal each.
The regional governor also delivered on Sunday an annual congratulatory message on Miners’ Day. “The main thing is that the number of descending workers into the mine was equal to the number of returning workers. Take care of yourselves and each other,” Tuleyev emphasized in his message of greetings.