North-Ossetian truckers voice new demands to authorities (+video)

In North Ossetia, drivers of heavy vehicles (truckers) continue their strike for the second day demanding to abolish the "Platon" system.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on March 27, truck drivers resumed their mass protests against the "Platon" system, which was introduced to collect toll from drivers of heavy trucks for travelling on federal roads. The protest action was joined by truck drivers from Dagestan, who decided to stop their transportations starting from March 27. Truck drivers from Volgograd, Baksan, Ossetia, and Astrakhan also joined the protest action.

The protest action of North-Ossetian truckers, held on the "Kavkaz" Highway near the village of Kardjin, involves over hundred drivers. However, as the organizers told in their interview to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, "in fact, many more people are on strike; many of them just do not go to work."

Today, the North-Ossetian truckers have appealed to local MPs. "We demand to completely abolish the ‘Platon’ system and cancel the tax on trucks. We also demand to reduce diesel fuel prices and to increase transportation tariffs," truckers have stated.

Apart from general demands, put forward by truckers in other regions of Russia, North-Ossetian drivers state "the need to cancel the X-ray screening at the exit from the republic."

"We are constantly travelling around the country, and nowhere else in Russia we saw this X-ray screening," Felix Pliev, one of the truckers, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"We are not in a reservation, to scan us all for the presence of firearms," said the trucker.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Kn