The department of the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Khabarovsk Territory and the company “UK Bamstroymekhanizatsiya” signed an agreement “on bringing convicts to forced labor” on the construction of the second line of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), RIA Novosti reports.

The cooperation agreement was signed by the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Dorokhin, and the general director of the UK Bamstroymekhanizatsiya company, Alexander Chernoyarov.

It is assumed that in order to attract prisoners to the construction of the second line of the BAM, a section will be created, “functioning as a correctional center” and located outside the colonies.

According to the head of the regional Federal Penitentiary Service, in the Khabarovsk Territory, about three thousand convicts can claim to replace imprisonment with forced labor.

In turn, the general director of the company building the second line of BAM, announced a shortage of labor, caused not only by the large scale of work, but also by the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the past few years, the Federal Penitentiary Service has repeatedly come up with the idea of ​​involving prisoners in construction. In May 2021, the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Alexander Kalashnikov, once again proposed on a voluntary basis to attract such prisoners to work at facilities where migrants usually work and where there is not enough labor due to the pandemic and closed borders.

Kalashnikov’s idea was supported by the  Investigative Committee  and the  Ministry of Justice , as well as the Ombudsman  Tatyana Moskalkova . A poll conducted by VTsIOM  showed that 71% of Russians approve of hiring convicts instead of migrants.

In early June, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said that prisoners are being experimentally involved in the construction of facilities in Moscow and the Moscow region.

(C)MEDUZA 2021