29 March 2024, Friday, 1:18
Support
the website
Sim Sim,
Charter 97!
Categories

Workers: Power To Be Displaced In Belarus

39
Workers: Power To Be Displaced In Belarus
ARCHIVE PHOTO

Poverty forces thousands of Belarusians look for work in neighboring countries.

Belsat TV channel broadcasts reports from the regions of Belarus.

The elimination of Homelablstroi constituent companies has made worse the already poor state of Homel district centers. The subsidiary 102 Mobile Mechanical Division has been closed down in the urban-type locality of Karma, too.

“The MMD is closed. The Road Maintenance Facility still exists, but in fact it does not function. We used to earn a bit there in the offseason time, and now there is no work,” – Karma resident Aliaksandr Bandarenka says.

The workers and equipment from the Karma MMD have been moved to Chechersk, where the leadership managed to save a similar company, the 118 MMD, due to the fact that the local organization was the strongest in Homelablstroi. Buda-Kashaliova builders have joined the Chechersk organization as well.

Massive job cuts are everywhere.

The number of employees at another Karma enterprise, which used to provide local residents’ earnings, has significantly reduced. There is only a sixth part left from the joint-stock company Karmaagraservis, which was created on the basis of four local organizations.

Now Karmaagraservis employs about eighty people instead of the previous five hundred. Those, who have lost their jobs, are engaged in subsistence farming, try in vain to find a job through an employment agency or leave to turn money. Karma residents admit that labor emigration to Russia is often the only solution.

Leave or fight

According to the National Statistics Committee data in May, Karma was among the three poorest regions of Belarus. And the liquidation and bankruptcy of enterprises do not improve the situation.

“There is no way out without reforms. The only way out now for those, who is able to work, is to leave this state. We have to change this government, or to put pressure on it to make it implement reforms, in order to return back to our families, to make everything right at home, – Andrei Tolchyn from the local branch of the REP independent trade union sums up. – Well, it’s down to preference whether to try making money in Russia or to change the situation in our country, for no one to leave it.”

Write your comment 39

Follow Charter97.org social media accounts