About fifty workers are now in hospitals in Lensk and Yakutsk cities. Meanwhile, residents of Lensk, whose relatives work at the field, claim that the first cases of COVID-19 appeared in Chayanda back in mid-March.
Protests in Chayanda
Protesters circulated a statement:
“Dear citizens of the Russian Federation! We, “Gazartstroy’s” employees, your fathers, children, husbands, and brothers, inform you, fellow citizens, that at the moment, on April 27, 2020, in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) at the Chayandinskoye oil and gas condensate field, at “VZiS” on the post “UKPG-3-73 km” we have been illegally detained at the facility GPP-3 since April 15, 2020. In connection with the outbreak of the virus incidence rate, “Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk” employees stopped working at facilities and kept us at “73 km” as suspects for the disease.
The unknown situation and the misinformation of “Gazartstroy’s” employees led to a destabilization of the situation and many attempts to appeal to the management to take measures to remove healthy people from the field. After the organized testing on April 22 by the Industrial Medicine medical staff located at “VZiS”, the results are delayed for unknown reasons, they plan to retest.
People, not knowing the results, do not understand whether they are kept together with the sick or not. The measures taken by the local authorities to isolate the suspects lead to nothing. The lack of physical contact in such living conditions is categorically impossible. We eat with common utensils, wash in shared baths and showers, and change common linen.
Together with all these circumstances, the elementary lack of informing people about their future fate, about the fate of the patients who have revealed themselves at the All-Russia Health and Safety Institute can lead to irreparable consequences. We call for civil liability those services and public institutions that are called to take care of people and the welfare of the country. What will happen to us next, we do not know, therefore, we ask you not to remain indifferent to our fate. We want to return to our families healthy, the same as we came here. Help send out this information. Complete anarchy is taking place at “73 km”.”
The Chayandinskoye field is the resource base of Gazprom for deliveries via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline. Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk, operating at the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia, said it had no plans for an unplanned removal of workers from the facility.
