The state of infrastructure in Romania
Thousands of employees from the Dacia Renault car factory held a protest on Thursday against the governments delay in building the Pitesti-Sibiu motorway
Valentin Țigău, 17.04.2015, 13:16
The employees of Renault’s Dacia factory in Mioveni, which produces 350,000 cars a year, on Thursday took to the streets to voice their concerns over the future of their jobs. Renault said recently that it was losing money because of the poor state of Romania’s transport infrastructure and warned that it may be facing a crucial choice unless the Sibiu-Pitesti motorway is built by 2020. Ford, which has a car factory in Craiova, has also complained about lack of good road infrastructure in Romania. The 8,000 Dacia employees who took part in the protest called on the authorities to respect their promise to build the motorway in question, while the vice-president of the Dacia trade union, Ion Iordache, threatened with more radical union action:
“Our future depends on the construction of the Pitesti-Sibiu motorway. We have been repeatedly lied to by this government and other governments, who have promised to build this motorway. Renault has already said it will withdraw from Dacia in 2020 and by then it will be too late to do anything about it.”
In another move, the National Trade Union Bloc on Thursday called on the government to debate and approve, as soon as possible, the country’s transport master plan including definite political, strategic and financial solutions to develop the modern transport infrastructure Romania so badly needs. The Social Democrat prime minister Victor Ponta called for an end to protests, saying they may determine the factory’s owners to move production to another country:
“If these protests continue, the production will be moved to Morocco. I know very well the level of Dacia salaries and I know very well how many projects we have supported with state aid, so I urge union leaders to exercise reason. Don’t forget that Dacia has other options and I wouldn’t want the factory to be moved somewhere else as a result of the strikes. Let us be rational and everything will be fine.”
However, the co-president of the National Liberal Party in opposition, Alina Gorghiu, has accused Victor Ponta of drastically reducing investments to secure a budget surplus. Meanwhile, the transport ministry has announced that, following recommendations from the European Commission, the 120-km-long motorway worth 1 billion euros has been included as a priority into Romania’s transport master plan and has a real chance of being finalised by 2020.
