MOSCOW Reuters -- Russia's largest truckmaker Kamaz is considering bringing in prisoners to work at its largest factories to compensate for a workforce deficit, CEO Sergei Kogogin said on Friday.
The work programme is being assessed by the Federal Penitentiary Service, said Kogogin, who spokeswoman for the Federal Penitentiary Service.
The firm is facing a shortage of 4,000 staff at its production facilities in Naberezhnye Chelny, an industrial city more than 900 kilometres 560 miles east of Moscow, he said. He said that the company, which is 47% owned by state conglomerate Rostec and 15% by Daimler, has already brought in migrant workers from Uzbekistan and is considering looking into Russian prisons for labourers.
Many migrant workers have been forced to leave Russia because of restrictions linked to the epidemic, forcing authorities and private companies to think about ways to fill worker shortages.
The Federal Penitentiary Service proposed a plan to use convicts to supplement the workforce, insisting that the new system would not resemble the GULAG labour camp system of the Soviet era.
In April, a government document ordered officials to assess the feasibility of using convicts to build railways.