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WARSAW, Oct 22 (AFP) - About 600 miners from the Silesia region protesting pit closures ended their blockade of two important railway hubs in southern Poland after appeals from the government, a union source said Friday.
The pitmen had begun blocking the two strategic points on Thursday, disrupting local and international traffic passing through the southern region of Tarnowskie Gory and Lazy, but gave in to a request from the deputy prime minister for social affairs to unblock the lines.
"Deputy prime minister Longin Komolowski sent a fax asking us to stop the strike and proposing solutions to our demands," said Marek Klementowski, a leader of the Solidarity union charged with the mining sector.
Klementowski declined to give details of the government proposals.
Solidarity chief Henryk Nakonieczny told journalists the miners wanted the government to slow down the pace of mining sector reforms, which involve many pit closures.
"We are also waiting for concrete proposals on the social aspects of reform, including the creation of alternative jobs and pensions for those who will have to leave," he added.
The strikers also protested the way the government was privatising the mining sector. The government was removing profitable mines from certain mining groups, pushing those remaining in these groups into almost certain bankruptcy, Nakonieczny explained.
Once the pride of the former communist regime, Silesia's coal mining industry is in deep crisis as pits deemed to be economically unviable close one after another.
The industry has racked up a total of 4.8 billion dollars (4.5 billion euors) in debt.
Last year, the centre-right government of premier Jerzy Buzek launched sweeping reforms under which 15 mines were to be shut and nine others partially closed out of a total of 72.
Production will be reduced from 85 to 78 million tonnes.
In 1997, 243,000 people worked in the mining sector. By July this year the figure had dropped to 189,750 and was expected to fall to 125,000 by 2002.