Labour camps: school children in Minsk will work for $100

The authorities have started implementing the idea of the creation of labour camps for teenagers.

Schoolchildren from the Belarusian capital’s Soviet district will be able to spend a part of the upcoming summer vacations there. They reported about that at the sub-department of ideological and educational work of the education department of the districts administration, Minsk-News agency reports.

Teenagers will be able, for example, to work at harvesting at agricultural enterprise Zhdanovichy. There will be packer vacancies provided for girls at CUM department store. At the center for additional education for children and youth Svetach schoolgirls will be able to work at sewing production and manufacturing souvenir goods. Apart from that, teenagers will work as maintenance workers at the territory of educational institutions.

According to the district ideologists’ assurances, the average salary at labour and recreation camps will account for 800 000 – 1 200 000 roubles.

In the opinion of a human rights activist Valancin Stefanovich, one cannot force teenagers and schoolchildren to work now, camarade.biz reports.

“We have some apologists of Soviet practices in the government. First the decree number 9 forbad people to quit their jobs, now labour camps… It makes the impression that the authorities want to employ everyone they can. But labour was obligatory in the USSR, and in Belarus we have the right to work, not a duty, according to the Constitution. Moreover, labour coercion is forbidden. A person may be coerced into labour only in one case – according to a court’s decision, which considers that such a measure is necessary for the correction of a convict. But you cannot hold every teenager on trial”.

However Stefanovich’s biggest concern is the contingent of the labour camps. He does not rule out that so-called unfavorable teenagers, who are registered with police etc., will be sent there. If they will be dispersed among usual children, it may end up being a kind of a children penal colony with all its attributes: violence against the younger, the rule of the strongest etc.