On Tuesday afternoon the director of the Raspadskaya coal mine, Igor Volkov, handed in his resignation.
It was signed promptly and the director-general of the Raspadskaya coal-mining company, Gennady Kozov, was appointed acting director of the mine.
To recap: during Monday's video conference with Novokuznetsk on the causes of the accident at Raspadskaya coalmine the head of Rostekhnadzor Nikolai Kutin told Vladimir Putin that his agency had twice during 2009 called for Igor Volkov to be disqualified. "The court did not support us," Kutin said. "On the first occasion he was fined 1000 roubles and on the second, 2000 roubles."
"A tragedy has occurred, and Volkov still works here and is sitting in the room," Vladimir Putin reacted. It is easy to imagine that after the prime minister's remarks his coworkers said goodbye to Volkov. But on Monday evening the press spokesperson for Raspadskaya, Galina Kovalchuk, said that the mine's director was not planning to resign and even if he handed in his resignation the company management would not accept it.
"You understand everything..." Galina Kovalchuk said when asked by Novaya Gazeta why Volkov's resignation had been accepted, and conceded that but for the prime minister's remarks Volkov would have kept his job.
During the same video conference Vladimir Putin announced that Rostekhnadzor would be removed from the Ministry of Natural Resources jurisdiction and put under direct government control, and the Energy Ministry and Rostekhnadzor would tighten the mine's safety standards.
Vladimir Putin proposed changing the system of miners' pay by making 70% of the wage fixed (i.e. independent of output).
Galina Kovalchuk said that nobody was thinking about changing the pay system at Raspadskaya mine at this point because everybody was concentrating on restoring the mine. "Changing the pay system was our first demand, Yelena Pershina, a member of a group of Mezhdurechensk activists who met with Aman Tuleyev on May 15 to present the miners' demands, told Novaya Gazeta. At present about 30% of the wage is fixed. But it is not enough to increase the percentage. We want miners' wages to be independent of output, we want them to be paid by the hour and not by the amount of coal they produce."
The government officials also discussed the behaviour of the people of Mezhdurechensk who staged an unauthorized rally on Friday before blocking the railway. Aman Tuleyev told the prime minister that the rally had been staged by "some destructive people of obscure identity... We have identified two British websites, four Ukrainian and four Moscow sites which spread all sorts of scary stories about burglaries, murders and so on."
Vladimir Putin suggested toughening the punishment for safety rule violations in the coal pit and proposed combating drunkenness and drug addiction among the miners. "If one, two or three workers are high on drugs and scores of lives are in danger, can this be tolerated?" Putin fumed.
His remarks startled the miners in Mezhdurechensk. It is hard to imagine a miner using drugs in a mineshaft. The participants of an internet forum in Mezhdurechensk suggested that the prime minister had just coined a new aphorism along with "rubbing them out in a toilet", "ferreting them out of sewage" and now "getting high on drugs in a coal pit."
P.S. The head of the Prosecutor's Office Investigative Committee (SKP), Alexander Bastrykin, pitched in: on Tuesday evening he announced that criminal charges would be brought against Igor Volkov and other managers at Raspadskaya mine.
The SKP is going to review the rulings on all the cases connected with accidents at Russian mines.