Dissatisfied owners of land on which the Kia Motors Slovakia plant was built in Teplicka nad Vahom will not block the entry road to the plant on Monday, however, they are prepared for protest actions. The state still owes them final payments for the land on which the Kia plant stands. "I promised to the Slovak Land Fund (SPF) that if at least one of us gets the money in his account, we will cancel the blockade," a petition committee member Justina Kozankova told SITA. She received the money in her account and four more landowners informed her that they got the money from SPF during the weekend. Therefore, the petition committee cancelled the blockade planned for Monday. SPF said on Friday it plans to solve the issue of remaining payments for landowners by the end of this week. "We do not trust them and, therefore, we remain on alert," said Ms. Kozankova. Over 360 landowners are waiting for additional money to be paid to them and thus increase the sale price of land plots to SKK 350 per a square meter. Originally, they had planned to protest on Friday, but then they decided to delay the protest.
Kia Motors Slovakia officially opened its plant in Zilina on April 24 of this year. The South-Korean carmaker invested about EUR 1 billion in the new plant. Since the launch of serial production last December, more than 35,000 cars rolled off the production line of the Zilina plant. This year the Zilina plant plans to produce about 150,000 cars. The company wants to start working at full capacity of 300,000 cars in 2009. The plant has been built on the area of 166 hectares and more than 3,000 people should find a job there.
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