An internally displaced miner was helped to get a pension for health reasons

Publication date: May 1, 2024

Author: Hanna Ziubina, a lawyer at Civic Platform NGO.

Volodymyr*, a 48-year-old miner from Donetsk oblast, moved to Kamianske, Dnipro oblast, in March 2022. After leaving his home and everything he had, he found shelter in Kamianske.

Volodymyr did not intend to despair, so he immediately started looking for work. As a miner, he had two years left before retirement. He quickly found a job as a security guard in a jewelry store. It seems that the man was lucky. But years of hard work in the mines had taken a toll on his health: his knees and back hurt badly, and he had high blood pressure due to stress and climate change. In his new job, however, Volodymyr had to stand most of the time, as guards were only allowed to rest during lunch breaks. It was pretty tricky for him, given his health problems. But the man had to endure it because he had to earn a living, and the 2000 UAH in state aid he received as an IDP was barely enough to buy food.

A year passed, and Volodymyr began considering collecting documents for a state pension. It so happened that during the occupation, the mine management managed to issue workbooks to the workers, which was a stroke of luck. But the problem was that the man already had a new job, and his workbook needed to record his dismissal from the mine.

So, the man turned to the NGO “Civic Platform” lawyers to ask how to act in such a situation.

First of all, we opened Volodymyr’s electronic account on the website of the Pension Fund of Ukraine. We found out he was working ¼ time at his new job there.  We also found out that his mining experience was enough to qualify him for a state pension. Then, we found information about the mine’s management online and contacted them. We wrote certain statements to the mine’s human resources department and the jewellery store’s management. 

We could remotely dismiss Volodymyr Vasylovych from the mine by obtaining a record from the Kamianske Employment Center and a record of his official employment at his new job.

In February, Volodymyr received his first pension.

*Name changed for ethical reasons.

The material was created with the support of the international charity platform GlobalGiving and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The publication’s content is solely the responsibility of the Legal Development Network.

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