The liquidators: workers who cleaned Chernobyl use anniversary to appeal for help

THE “LIQUIDATORS” who were dispatched to deal with the Chernobyl meltdown have used the anniversary of the disaster to appeal for medical and financial help.

In protests in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and at a meeting with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, some of the 600,000 or so people who risked their lives and long-term health to try to mitigate the impact of the accident sought to draw attention to their plight.

Vyacheslav Grishin, of the Chernobyl union of liquidators in Russia, estimated that of 200,000 rescue workers still living in the country some 90,000 have major health problems.

Grishin said the recent emergency at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami, had helped focus attention on the fate of liquidators in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus who were barely surviving on meagre benefits and had largely been forgotten by their countries.

“Initially, I was treated like a hero. I was given travel and free medicine. But since the [benefits] law was changed I have nothing,” said Russian liquidator Vladimir Kudriashov, who took part in the clean-up effort in September and October 1986.

Thirty-one people died in the blast and its immediate aftermath. However, controversy surrounds the long-term health impact from the disaster, with some organisations saying only a handful of people died from related cancers and others claiming that hundreds of thousands of people perished around the world.

Some liquidators accuse their governments of playing down the consequences of the accident to limit the medical care they have to provide.

Alexander Shabutkin, another liquidator, asked Medvedev to ensure wives and widows of Chernobyl veterans were catered for and not “left defenceless before officials and before fate itself, because some of them looked after their husbands for years and lost their jobs”.