Only 2,000 of Zaporizhzhya NPP's workers left out of 11,000, acting CEO says
Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (Photo:REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko)
About one fifth of the previous staff numbers or about 2,000 of people are still working at Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as of now, Dmytro Verbytsky, acting director general of the plant, told business magazine Forbes Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Since these workers signed contracts with Russian state-owned nuclear operator Rosatom, their employment has been temporarily terminated on the basis of the law of collaboration, Verbytsky said.
They will be shut out of work if their willing collaboration with the enemy is proved, he said.
"Actually, Energoatom (the Ukrainian state nuclear operator) gave us a choice – either we're are patriots and boycott our work, or we're betrayers who continue to work on the plant in order to prevent a disaster," Oleh Dudar, a department manager of ZNPP who fled Enerhodar in August, told Forbes Ukraine.
At the same time, ZNPP's workers now have to work 16 hours in a row now instead of the usual 6-hour-long shifts due to staff shortages.
Those workers who refused to sign a contract with Rosatom are banned from the plant by the occupiers. There were about 4,000 of them by late February.
It was reported earlier by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Russian troops continue to actively militarize the occupied ZNPP and to block a rotation of IAEA experts at the plant for many weeks.
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