How Utility Providers Set Up Regime By Their Figures

A Pole, "oppressed" by housing and communal services, appeared to be almost 2.5 times richer than a "prosperous" Belarusian after paying the utilities bills!

Figures are a tricky thing. Especially when the state needs to explain some another rise in price to people. Then no stone is left unturned: demonstrational percentages, comparative tables. The main thing is to give more impressive figures.

Actually, this straightforward method has been used by the authorities recently, when they tried to justify the rise in tariffs for utility services for Belarusians. Through the words of public utility providers, they told us straight that we should "stop whining and moaning", because 11% of your salary are just peanuts if compared to how much people pay in the neighboring countries. Hard life of the Poles, who have to give away as much as 25% of earnings for communal services, should have made an especially strong impression on Belarusians.

In fact, the calculations of public utilities are not quite correct for several reasons. But let's try to believe in the figures given by them at least for a little while and see what we will happen.

While the impressionable citizens wipe a tear, worrying about miserable neighbors, let's take a calculator.

According to the Central Statistical Office of Poland, the average monthly salary amounted to 4329 zlotys (about 1050 USD equivalent) in November 2016. This means that 25% of this amount is as much as 262 dollars! Frankly speaking, it's quite a big sum - almost two-thirds of a salary of a Belarusian. And now let's deduct this "exorbitant" amount from the average salary of our unfortunate neighbors. It turns out that there still remains ... 788 dollars. 788!

Needless to say, that an average Byelorussian has never even dreamed of such money even in the best times. There's even no point calculating our modest and socially fair 11%. But still. According to the formula "average salary minus payment per utility bills", a happy Belarusian has 329.3 dollars. That is almost 2.5 times less than that of the unfortunate Pole.

I would like to add a couple more strokes to the picture. Many non-food goods, including equipment, cost significantly less in Poland than in Belarus. No wonder that our compatriots regularly storm the border of the neighboring country, severely irritating the Belarusian authorities.

The same is about food products. I once had to compare the prices in Belarusian and Polish stores for one of the articles. It turned out that the food set for a "capitalists" family of three persons was one third cheaper than that for a Belarusian family. And this is with such a difference in income!

That's how the communal services providers have unwillingly made people to take a closer look at the life of the neighbors, and to re-evaluate all the "charms" of life in the socially oriented state.

Anastasia Zeliankova, Solidarity