Kazan Students are Suffering for the Salary
Yesterday, the rescue operation to save 17 Russian students had succeeded. The students spent more that 24 hours on the roof of flooded hotel in down town of New Orleans. In the mean time, 15 more students from Kazan are still remaining in the flood area. They came to the United States with international exchange program “Work and Travel.” The Kazan students barricaded themselves in the house and refused to leave until they will receive salries that they earned while working in the US. It is about $5,000 per each student.
Seventeen Russian students were finally evacuated from the disaster area. They spent more than 24 hours on the roof of Southern Comfort Corp. Suites (Downtown of New Orleans) without food or water. They came to the US after the invitation from international exchange program “Work and Travel.” Seven of them –Elena Nekhaeva, Viktoria Rytanova, Olga Nikitina, Sergey Baranov, Alexander Kalinin, Gleb Nesmeyannov and Olesya Mutavina –came from Chelyabinsk and worked in New Orleans in Sheraton. Also, the hotel roof became only safety spot for the students from Ekaterinburg, Tambov, Belgorod Region and Perm.
Sergey Meston, Russian Vice-Consul in Houston (TX), told Kommersant that “the rescue operation included 50 helicopters and 10,000 military personnel.” Kommersant was able to connect with mother of one of the students from Perm – Daria Grigorenko. Her mother, Elena Andreeva, once, she found out that her daughter was rescued, could say only one thing:”Oh, thank You, God!”
However, as Kommersant found out from the Vice-Cunsul, there are 15 more students from Kazan are still in the flood area. “According to the American policemen, these young people stacked food, water, and barricaded themselves in the house on Crowner Boulevard,” Meston said. “They refuse to leave the building until they will get paid the salaries owned to them. We do not have any established communications with these students.”
The Ministry of Education of Tataria could not precise the exact amount of the students, who got stuck in new Orleans. “The republican colleges negotiated their international exchange programs without consulting with us,” the official from the ministry told Kommersant. Kazan’s travel agency Star Travel confirmed that three local students –Yulia Salikhova, Alfia Nasyrova (both from the Kazan University), and Elena Baideryakova (Kazan State Technical University of Tupolev) - were send to New Orleans and now “the girls are waiting for a help.” The travel agency refuses to comment on possible rejection of help by the students. In other travel agency, which also deals with “ Work and Travel”, the representative said that ”first of all, you can expect anything from Russian students, and, second, their employer possibly could refuse to pay them because he could suffer himself from this natural disaster.”
The travel agent explained to Kommersant that the standard term of agreement for international exchange is next: Russian travel agents charge in average $2,000 for such trip and the students can earn about $5,000 for four months of work. The parents of Kazan students cannot establish communication with their children and thus cannot persuade them to leave the flooded zone and to come back home. They receive the information about the girls’ fate only from the Star Travel. And the travel agency gets its info from the Russian Consular Division and American sponsors of the exchange program -- CIEE company.
Yulia Osipova; Ekaterina Vorobieva: Andrey Smirnov, Kazan, Anastasiya Kostina, Perm
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 02, 2005
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