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Russian state news agency reportedly isn’t paying its staff

Source: Meduza

Wage arrears have been reported at Russia’s state-owned news agency TASS. Pavel Bednyakov, a photographer for the agency Sinkhua, wrote on Twitter today that TASS has informed him of a delay in his pay. According to Bednyakov, TASS is also holding salaries for its staff photographers.

Now I’m hearing from TASS: Pavel, greetings. In connection with the current situation, outpayments are postponed indefinitely.

On condition of anonymity, a TASS employee told Meduza that salaries are indeed being held back. According to the source, the news agency’s management has promised to pay its staff by the end of the month. TASS doesn’t have money to pay its employees because of an interruption in funding from the government, which is busy reducing its allocations to the news agency, according to Meduza‘s source.

According to the newspaper Vedomosti, the federal government planned to allocate 1.8 billion rubles ($22.2 million) in 2016.

In early 2015, TASS reduced its staff, dismissing roughly a quarter of all employees.