Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: What is the situation now, at the end of the year? What about social problems? What about measures to reduce unemployment? What about wages and salaries? Please, go ahead.

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov: On the whole, we have not achieved the results we had hoped for, but we have not suffered any major setbacks either.

About 700 people were laid off this year, mostly at the oil refinery. There has been practically no work at the refinery for three years and we had to dismiss them. The employment service helped us find jobs for almost all of them in small companies or in the field of individual enterprise.

Ten thousand more people are engaged in private enterprise this year as compared to last year. We have helped them to go into it.

Vladimir Putin: Is the programme to combat unemployment working?

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov: Yes, it is. Nevertheless we have dismissed workers, and this is a fact. Also, people's incomes are 1% lower than last year because of the crisis.

The average monthly wages and salaries are also 10% to 15% lower. We will tackle this problem next year.

Public works have helped us considerably in dealing with the crisis. We have internship programmes in public works that attract young people, college students and graduates. They work three to four days a week for about 4,300 roubles per month. We are reinforcing theory with practical training, just as we planned.

We are behind our plan for building roads. I hope that we will complete one of the two strategic projects - a mountainous road in the Dzheirakh District and a bridge. We will lay the asphalt till the end of May.

We have made significant progress in construction of homes in the area affected by the landslide. The spokesman for the South Federal District visited us the other day and we checked on the site. We have built 500 homes this year - a whole community. Construction began in May, and 1.9 billion roubles were allocated for this purpose. None of these funds were stolen.

We are planning to allow people to move into this community on February 23, the Deportation Day. We do not want this day to be only a day of mourning for our people. We want people to be able to move in on that day. We will finish everything in the next two months.

Vladimir Putin: Have you resumed gas supplies?

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov: Yes, we have. Yesterday we had this tragic incident... but inspectors did a good job and officials oversaw everything. Every direction, every area in between villages is under control.

We would have defused the bombs yesterday but visibility was bad, it was foggy...

Vladimir Putin: Yes, I know.

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov: There were a number of traps there. To avoid victims we the operational headquarters decided to stop all work for the time being. The bombs were defused in the morning. Gas supplies have been resumed. Everything is normal.

Vladimir Putin: Good.