High-ranking officials must be brought to justice over emergencies - Zyuganov
MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax) - Leader of the Russian Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov has lashed out at the government for failing to establish and punish those who are really to blame for major disasters that took place in Russia in recent years.
"Over the past couple of years, 444 people have been killed in emergencies, according to official statistics. Unofficial data suggest that the death toll may be one order of magnitude higher," he told Interfax on Monday.
He said he meant the Lame Horse nightclub fire in Perm, the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro-electric power plant accident and the Bulgaria cruise ship wreck.
"As for the horror in Kuban, we still have no precise information about either the death toll or what has already been done to ease the plight of local residents who lost all they had," Zyuganov said.
In the above three cases, there has been plenty of time to establish the identity of the culprits, he said. "But the Lame Horse owner is the only one to have been sent to jail. We know nothing about officials who certified that the building was serviceable, that its fire safety system was normal and so on. The same could be said about the Bulgaria wreck and the Sayano-Shushenskaya disaster. They find some minor figure and shift the entire blame on him".
