The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine solves the problems of miners suffering from forced downtime and delays in the payment of wages.

This was stated by acting Minister of Energy of Ukraine Olha Buslavets at a meeting of the Anti-Crisis Energy Headquarters, which took place on June 19 under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal.

The video conference gathered together heads of mining cities and heads of towns from different regions of the country, who had appealed to the Government with a request to study the threatening situation in their localities and take measures to prevent "local disasters."

In turn, acting Minister of Energy assured the representatives of local governments that the Government has already made a decision that will help ensure the balance of the electricity sector, thereby allowing to resume the operation of mines.

According to Olha Buslavets, the current situation is due to non-compliance by a number of companies with certain indicators of the Forecast Electricity Production Balance in May and early June this year, as well as due to replacement of domestic coal consumption with natural gas used by TPPs for electricity generation.

As a result, the work of mines has been suspended, miners are forced to idle, it causes delay in payment their wages and entails growing socio-economic tensions in the coal regions.

To solve this problem, on June 17, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the Order "On Ensuring Fuel Balance of Ukraine's Electricity Sector and Security of Electricity Supply" developed by the Ministry of Energy, which is aimed to increase the demand for domestic coal, the loading of state-owned coal enterprises and reducing state subventions to national mines, the preservation of jobs during the crisis and the fulfillment of obligations to pay wages to miners.

Denys Shmyhal, in turn, stressed: "Together with the President and the Servant of the People Party, we have made commitments to Ukrainian miners. This is a promise that workers in state-owned mines will be paid on time and in full. Our actions now are the realization of such promises. We have supported the coal industry and are returning thousands of miners to work."