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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Asia Pacific World Crisis-hit Russian city fears total shutdown AFP - Tuesday, March 2 Send IM Story Print A local resident is seen walking his dog past the boarded-up windows of an apartment building in Revda. The decrepit buildings on Victory Street are mostly all shuttered-up, the mine that is the main employer is on the brink of collapse and the railway stopped running last year. REVDA, Russia (AFP) - – The decrepit buildings on Victory Street are mostly all shuttered-up, the mine that is the main employer is on the brink of collapse and the railway stopped running last year. This is Revda -- a collection of grey Soviet apartment blocks that rise out of nowhere in the snowy wastes of Russia's Far North -- and a city whose existence hangs by a thread. The atmosphere of depression amid the economic crisis is shared by dozens of other industrial cities in Russia but Revda's residents have been dealing with a unique fear -- that their city could face a death sentence. Russian daily Vedomosti reported before the New Year that the government planned to close the city and resettle all of its 9,000 inhabitants. Officials have denied the report but the fear remains. "It's worse than Chechnya here! This is a lost town. Everything is falling apart," muttered Lyudmila Dobrinskaya, 61, comparing the emptiness and crumbling plaster to the country's war-torn southern region. "Everyone who could, has left. There's no work and at the mine they pay worse than anywhere else," she said of the main employer, the Lovozersky Mine and Processing Plant, where her 66-year-old husband still works. One of hundreds of one-company towns that are home to 12 percent of Russia's 142 million people, experts say Revda should have vanished from the map long ago when it became apparent its mines would not survive in a market economy. "We are in shock. Anything can happen if the mine closes," 32-year-old resident Larisa Yagnish said. Now even the tracks of the closed railroad are gone -- torn up by people selling the scrap metal desperate for extra money. When this industrial outpost was built in 1950, some 170 kilometres (100 miles) from the Arctic city of Murmansk, workers who moved here from all over the USSR were paid premium wages. Now for residents of such isolated factory towns, dreams of moving back to urban centres are almost impossible. Their welfare is tied to the Lovozersky mine, the city's lifeblood. Vedemosti cited unnamed government officials as saying federal funds in Revda would likely go to shut the city. "I won't say it was wrong. It might have been discussed but we are not considering such an option," Viktor Gorbunov, the regional deputy minister for economic development, told AFP. The mayor, Alovsat Mamedov, said Revda has been listed by the government among 27 cities most in need of anti-crisis aid. "They thought the company on which the city depends might not survive. God forbid that it suddenly closes; 950 employees plus their families -- that is about 2,700 people -- will be without a livelihood," he said. More than a third of Revda's residents have already left. "People who had some place better to go left in the 1990s; those left don't have anywhere to go," Mamedov said. The Lovozersky mine has never been profitable. It went bankrupt three times since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 when links with buyers in Estonia were abruptly severed. One client now dictates prices for its hard-to-extract product, loparite, a rare greyish-black ore, used in limited quantities to make metal alloys. The bigger of two mines was flooded a year ago, costing some 2,500 jobs. Work in the remaining mine is unsafe due to disrepair and ageing tools. Last year, two miners were killed in accidents. "The only work here is at the police station, the fire department and the prison. That's it. There's nothing else. I'm sure they will close the city soon," said Dmitry Dashenko, 28, who quit working at the mine when the crisis hit. Russia has so far set aside 20 billion rubles (664 million dollars) to save its failing one-industry towns and invest in projects to diversify the local economy. Officials here hope Moscow will approve plans to develop a pig farm and tourism. Both projects however depend on the Lovozersky mine remaining the principal employer. "Honestly, conditions at the plant are very poor ... They have to switch to 21st-century standards. At the moment it's still all Soviet," Gorbunov admitted. But he insisted the mine would not shut. "The fact that it's not profitable, believe me, that may be true for another ten years but no one will let it die." The head of the Lovozersky mine and other officials at the plant refused to speak to AFP. There are at least 350 cities like Revda, where the closing of a single company could throw a whole population out of work and trigger the kind of social unrest that could test the authorities. In November, President Dmitry Medvedev admitted Russia would be forced to move people from some depressed regions where unemployment is soaring. Next month, the state will test a pilot programme to relocate hundreds of workers made redundant at its biggest carmaker Avtovaz. Resettling Revda's residents would be the "smart choice," according to Moscow-based analyst Natalya Zubarevich of the Independent Institute of Social Politics. "People must be helped to move. The company is inefficient and living conditions are extreme in the Far North. It's not a 'normal' town, so what's the point of trying to save it?" she said. She added however that the government does not have the power to entirely shut a city as some people cannot be forced to leave. The risk then is of a city entirely dependent on welfare payments. "Such a scenario can be described with one word -- degradation. Full social degradation," Zubarevich said. 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