Payments to Chernobyl survivors halved

The lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, has voted to halve the maximum benefits paid out to survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Under the new rules, monthly payments cannot exceed three-hundred-and-fifty dollars.Survivors' families will continue to receive allowances after their death. The new rules are seen as a compromise between the government's more restrictive proposals and pressure to maintain higher benefits by survivors and some Duma deputies.

Tens of thousands of people suffered injury and disease after helping to fight an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant -- then in the Soviet Union -- in 1986.

A Duma deputy said less than one percent of survivors would be affected by the new rules; he said most of the fifty-thousand eligible for benefits were receiving less than thirty dollars a month at today's rates.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service