1500 corona-positive workers in Turkey-based company resume working

1500 construction workers working for Turkey’s Yamata Investment in a gas processing plant in Russia’s Amur oblast were forced to resume working despite being tested positive for COVID-19.
Wednesday, 17 June 2020 13:13

Construction works were stopped for 15 days in a gas processing plant in Russia’s Amur after 1500 workers were tested positive for COVID-19. However, the workers have been forced to resume working despite the results of the secondary tests. 

Contacting Turkey's solidarity network "We Breathe Down the Bosses' Neck" (PE), the workers informed that they resumed working as of June 15 as the COVID-19 negative workers started working without any measures of social distance, protective masks and hygiene while the corona-positive workers were transferred to separate rooms.

Following the detection of the first coronavirus cases, Yamata Investment had received the petitions of the workers who had wanted to come back to Turkey. As around 300 workers had wanted to return to Turkey, only 150 of them could do so. 

The workers who have recently resumed working in Russia’s Amur do not trust in the tests since one of the corona-negative workers put in quarantine in Turkey was later tested positive and hospitalized in Turkey. 

An ambulance airplane has not been sent yet to Russia in order to take three Turkish workers to Turkey as they are hospitalized in Russia for severe COVID-19 symptoms.

The wife of a Kazakh-origin Turkish worker told PE that Yamata Investment did not run the process properly as the company asked the family to sign some unnecessary formal documents to take the sick worker back to Turkey by an air ambulance.