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State Apparatus “Reform”: Only One In 60 Officials Laid Off

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State Apparatus “Reform”: Only One In 60 Officials Laid Off

The “state apparatus reform” was announced back in 2013, and since then, Lukashenka kept demanding to downsize the number of officials from year to year.

In the end, the state apparatus should have reduced by more than a half by now. However, it turns out only one in sixty officials was unlucky.

Lukashenka spoke about the necessity to cut down the number of state officials by 25% in January 2013. It was presumed the reduction would happen within half a year.

“We have to reduce our numbers approximately by a quarter, this is inevitable. Let us proceed from this,” — Lukashenka said at a meeting on optimizing the structure, size and functions of the state bodies, held in early January of 2013.

Later, addressing to the people and the “parliament” in April 2013, Lukashenka informed: “On April 12, I signed a decree which provides for reduction of the number of state officials by 25% or 13 617 people. Herein, we will reduce the central bodies by 25%, the regional executive committees — approximately by 29%, and the district executive committees — by 17%".

Already in August 2014, Lukashenka mentioned the mass downsize of the number of officials again, having informed the state apparatus might be reduced by a half.

In April 2015 he demanded to cut down the state apparatus by another 10%.

In February 2016, Lukashenka once again demanded to “optimize the state apparatus in the shortest possible terms”. The remaining state officials, according to him, should get decent wages combined with the heavy workload.

Given such annual “clean-up”, the state apparatus should have reduced for more than a half for the last three years, but in fact only one in 60 officials were laid off, which is confirmed by the information provided by the Belarusian Statistical Committee.

The statistical almanacs “Work and Employment” with the detailed data on the number of officials are published every two years. The timely data for July 2015 has been released recently, Nasha Niva reports.

According to the Belarusian Statistical Committee, as of July 1, 2015 there were 48 463 state officials in Belarus. The number was reduced by 863 in total if compared to the previous data, which means one in 60 state officials was laid off!

As for particular regions, only 10 people were laid off in, for example, Hrodna region.

The number of state officials:

November 2009 — approximately 56.740;

November 2011 — 56.232 (-0,9% compared to the previous period);

November 2013 — 49.326 (-12,3%);

July 2015 — 48.463 (-1,8%).

The number of employees of the state bodies and institutions:

November 2009 — approximately 71.250;

November 2011 — 70.612 (-0,9% compared to the previous period);

November 2013 — 68.807 (-2,6%);

July 2015 — 63.708 (-7,4%).

It is worth mentioning that it had been informed back in August 2013 that, as a result of the “downsize” of the number of officials, the wages thereof grew by 50-100%.

In November 2013, the Ministry of Finance reported the growth of the officials’ wages by 30% as a result of the state apparatus “reduction”.

“Cutting down the state apparatus by 25% allowed us to increase the wages by 30% without expanding the budget expenses," — Deputy Minister of Finance of the Republic of Belarus Maksim Yermalovich said back then.

However, as there was no reduction of the number of officials in fact, their wages grew due to additional expenditures of the state budget, that is, at our expense. It happened while the wages of the Belarusian citizens not only failed to grow but began to decline, and the Belarusians officials of different levels began to teach us life, offering the "belt-tightening", the "spinning round" and taking up two jobs, belaruspartisan.org writes.

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