Coal town changes with the times

THE historic town of Most into which Olga Vagasiova was born 29 years ago has completely disappeared.

It was demolished in the early 1970s and its 70,000 inhabitants moved to a concrete jungle a short distance away.

The only thing to survive was the Gothic Cathedral which, through a feat of engineering that could be devised only by the Soviets, was moved completely intact to a new site almost a kilometre away.

For over 20 years, hundreds of local people worked in the open-cast coal mine that replaced their old homes, but the coal is now gone and the town has an unemployment rate of over 20%.

Surrounded by rolling hills and huge fertile farms, the town of Most has survived all the turmoil and now has a new library, hospital, hotels, conference centres, shops, wide streets and wave after wave of high-rise flats.

Smoke billows from the chimneys of its surviving chemical plants and an Irish operation, M Ward Manufacturing SRO, has opened its doors, aiming to employ 1,000 people in various ventures over the next few years.

Olga was first hired by the Ward brothers not for any job in particular but because she is fluent in English, which she learned as an au pair in London and Boston. She also speaks German and Russian, and as a Czech speaker understands Slovak. Her job is human resources manager, one that she likes.

She is not sentimental about the demolition of her home town, which was like a smaller version of Prague, but her father often expresses regret. He has told her it had three beautiful squares with water fountains. Very little was said in public about it at the time. "They were not allowed to think about it and it was not possible to say anything about it in those Soviet times. It was politically motivated to increase industry and people were offered jobs and new flats," she says.

Olga lives in a one-bedroom apartment with her husband of two years and they recently bought a plot of land and hope to build a house, for which they will have to take out a mortgage.

She would like to start a family in the next year or two and says her husband talks about quitting his job as a driver with a German company to look after the baby, especially if her job pays more than his. He is a little unusual in this, she says, though Czech men are taking a greater interest in their children than in the past.

Many women take the full four years maternity leave and are paid a decreasing percentage of their salary from their social welfare payments. Finding a place in a nursery or kindergarten for a small child can be difficult and places have to be booked well in advance and cost about 30 a month from an average monthly salary of about 800.

In many cases friends or family look after babies but not for money. "Nobody would ask someone foreign or someone they did not know to look after their children," she says.

Housework is still a woman's job here, although Olga's husband likes to cook. But children are changing, according to Olga's mother, who is a teacher.

Having spent her working life teaching she is looking forward to retiring in two years' time. She says the pupils have become difficult to control, using their mobile phones in class and refusing to do as they are told.

"I think children from rich families are getting spoiled," says Olga, adding that this would not have been tolerated in Soviet times when everyone was afraid of authority.

Right now Olga says she would not vote to join the EU. The standard of living in the Czech Republic is very good for the average family, she says, much better than for the average family she found in Britain.

Her boss, Katerina Zahradkova, agrees the standard of living is good but thinks she might vote to join the EU. A qualified mechanical engineer, she manages M Ward and has seen it develop from a shell of a building on the outskirts of the town a year ago to starting production three months ago with 130 employees.

The company supplies a range of overseas companies taking advantage of the cheaper labour in the Czech Republic.