Strike in southern Kazakhstan

Trade unions in Kazakhstan say three-thousand workers have now gone on strike over wage arrears in the southern town of Zhanatas.

The head of the Independent Trade Union Leonid Solominsaid in Almaty that the workers -- who are employees of a major state industrial phosphorplant -- had not been paid since 1995 and the government's debt amounted to more than seven-million dollars 540 million tenge.

He said more than one-hundred workers were on hunger strike in yurts outside the plant and thirteen of them were in hospital.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev has stressed his intention to solve the problem of wage and pension arrears, which led to strikes and protests across the country last year .

He said private pension funds would be set up, as one of the ways to deal with the problem.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service