Disasters occurred in the galleries and the May Day, 3 May 2022

...Miners’ job is the most difficult and dangerous. We face the risk of life on a daily basis. The mining sector has the highest number of accidents and deaths at work. More than 50 miners have died in the workplace in the last 8 years alone. Meanwhile, in the last two months:

• On the 4th of March, another accident occurred in the Bulqiza mines, injuring 40-year-old miner Rasim Laçi. The information in the formal police notification is sparse, as is customary, with no indication of the company where the accident occurred or the circumstances in which it occurred.
• The 19th of March was the date of the next horrific mining disaster. Afrim Zhutaj, 43, and Adil Dautaj, 41, were killed when a gallery in Tropoja collapsed. Miners continue to die in mines due to difficult working conditions, a lack of investment in safety, and the lack of government oversight.
• The last disaster occurred on the 19th of April in Bulqiza’s AlbChrome mine. Arben Stafa, a 54-year-old miner, lost one of his toes and was sent to Trauma Hospital in Tirana. This accident has been attempted to be kept hidden, as is customary. Neither the state police nor the media made the information public.

Despite this dramatic situation, in return, we only receive exploitation, exchange, hard working conditions and ridiculous salaries. Dignified treatment follows us even after retirement if we achieve it. Pensions are a mockery for the workers who have sacrificed for decades in the black depths of the underground...

All of these are very strong reasons to react, organize and protest for our rights. Every day should be May Day where there are mines and miners...

Millions of tons of chrome have helped build and develop a significant part of Albania, a contribution that has never been returned to Bulqiza. Thousands of miners have worked over the years and continue to work, in conditions they never managed to be dignified. Therefore, the balance of deaths and accidents has been as in a war situation.

The situation is not at all positive even today. In recent months, Samir Manes's AlbChrome company, which has barbarically exploited its chrome reserves, has left the mine of Bulqiza, has suppressed workers and their efforts to organize an independent union, and 9 workers have died while exploiting the mine.

AlbChrome has been replaced by a Turkish company through a process that is not at all transparent, where the workers have not been asked for anything. No one knows the term of the contract, its terms, the role of the state, access to working conditions, etc., but rumors are circulating about the risk of rising rates and falling wages that are already low.

The old and corrupt unions, of Kol Nikolla and Gëzim Kalaja, are in fierce competition over who is more subservient to the new company and who guarantees the “support” of workers to continue to use them as not worse...