Albanian Oil Workers Rally for Unpaid Wages

The workers rallied outside the Ministry of Energy on Thursday after leaving the previous morning on a march from the southern city of Fier, where the refinery is located, to urge officials to intervene.

They are seeking the payment of two months' worth of as-yet-unpaid wages, plus a 13 further months of wages that they say have gone unpaid for several years.

They are also asking for the troubled refinery's operations, which have been suspended for some time, to be restarted.

Energy minister Damian Gjiknuri agreed to meet a delegation of six of the protesters.

One of the workers, Lavdosh Lazaj, told BIRN that they will not leave Tirana until their problems are resolved.

"The ministry has a duty to help us. We don't have anywhere to go if we don't get our unpaid wages," he said.

The workers marched on foot for most of the 100-kilometre route from Fier and arrived in Tirana in the early hours of Thursday.

"We want bread! We want bread! We want our money!" they chanted while walking slowly along the road.

"We are marching because our factory was closed and we have not received pay cheques for November," one of the protesters told BIRN in Mbrostar, about five kilometres into their march.

"We want to celebrate New Year's Eve but we don't have the money to eat anything," he added.

Albania has two refineries in the towns of Ballshi and Fieri in the south of the country but they have both faced repeated financial difficulties since their privatisation in 2008.

The company that currently operates the refineries, Ionian Refining & Trading Company, IRTC, said in a press release on Wednesday that "the workers' concerns are also our concerns".

The company added that the current crisis started when...