Russian Space Agency Bans Employees from Traveling Abroad
December 21st, 2011The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
—William Faulkner
Coming up next: Consequences for the families of those who leave anyway.
Via: AFP:
They may be working to reach the final frontier, but employees of Russian space agency Roscosmos face going no further than Russia for their holidays.
Roscosmos’ new chief Vladimir Popovkin has imposed a formal ban on managers and staff employed by its rocket-making subsidiaries taking holidays abroad, the Izvestia daily said, quoting an internal directive.
The Soviet-style edict applies to workers who are judged to have knowledge of particularly important or secret information connected to Russia’s rocket industry.
It applies not only to subsidiaries of Roscosmos but also companies with which it has concluded contracts for work deemed to be of a sensitive nature, Izvestia said.
The only exception, it said, is if an employee can prove that they are in need of medical treatment abroad that is unavailable in Russia.
“This is an official document and it is part of other official rules about questions of ensuring security,” the head of public relations at Roscosmos Alexei Kuznetsov told the newspaper.
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Their foreign travel passports will be kept by their company and only given out after a number of bureaucratic formalities are fulfilled.