Aliaksandr Iarashuk: Authorities build up system of forced labour

"Anti-sponger tax" is an attempt to revive a forced labour system.

Aliaksandr Iarashuk, the Chairman of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, said it in his interview to charter97.org.

- What do you think about compulsory taxation of officially unemployed people?

- You know, there is nothing extraordinary here. Welcome back to the USSR as they also used to fight spongers...Our authorities have a specific way of perception and do not hide nostalgia for the days when everybody walked in line. It's an attempt to do the same but in new historical era with its new conditions. It is called an attempt of building up a forced labour system. Forced labour is condemned worldwide, in particular, by the International Labour Organization.

Tax on parasitism continues the tradition of fixed-term employment contracts as a form of forced labour, introduced by Decree No. 29, as well as Decree No. 9 from December 7, 2012 introduced forced labour in woodworking. So, it's the way they force people to work. But, of course, this is a violation of human rights. It's out of your business whether a person works or not. As for taxes, people pay them every hour as they go shopping and purchase goods. Every Belarusian citizen only by means of buying things stimulates the economy. This is the way he/she pays taxes. And all those passages about spongers are unjustified.

- Who is going to suffer from anti-sponger tax the most?

- It's a very important moment: there are 500. 000 people unemployed in the country, 100. 000 of them are housewives with obvious reasons not to work. Those unemployed are the problem of the country as it focused on command-and-control methods of economic management. As the authorities do not want to develop the market and bring the country to the civilized development, they make impossible the creation of jobs, doing business and having a decent job for hundreds of thousands of people. But because they do not have this ability, they are forced to adapt to current conditions, and often be engaged in labour relations without any official registration. It's the authorities' problem as they do not want to create favourable conditions with just one purpose: to prevent people from feeling economic freedom and therefore a political one.

–What will consequences of these measures be?

- I guess any separate decree or another odious legal act of Belarusian authorities cannot lead to any protests or disturbances. Now we see that the system is being built up consequently by Decree No. 29, which introduced a system of fixed-term employment contracts, Decree No. 9 with its forced labour, Decree No. 5, which seriously deteriorated a legal status both of workers and employers. Now, all these legal acts and decrees with the deterioration of the economic situation, and it is clearly deteriorating, can lead to increased social tension due to the devaluation and increasing noncompetitiveness of Belarusian products. A number of enterprises are reducing the work week and there are problems with paying out salaries and their amount.

- Is there any possibility to change the situation or have they reached the point of no return?

In this situation, the authorities should have taken diametrically opposite decisions: do not tighten the situation but loosen it to give people the opportunity to work and earn money. Today they will force spongers to work, and at the same time, a number of large enterprises, such as "MAZ", "Homselmash" have 3-4 day work-week and in the first decade the vast majority of Belarusian state-owned enterprises were "jobless" - this is absurd! Do you want hundreds of thousands of people who are spongers in your view, make working, but where they should work, if even those officially listed as working are not involved in activities? But just the reverse should happen. Now it's necessary to pave the way for liberalization of the economy, so that people could freely and easily create their own business, conduct it, and create new jobs. This is a chance for Belarus in the future and for people so that they will be able to have a sufficient number of jobs that will guarantee a decent work and salary.