Brest Resident Left With No Pension After 17 Years Of Army Service

The man has over 30 years of general labour experience, but the 17 years of service in the army were not added up to his pension insurance record.

“I turned 60 last August, but I decided to find out what I should do to apply for and receive the labour pension a little earlier, in February, — he has clarified. — I came over to the department of the social protection fund at my place of residence. The inspector checked my documents and suddenly said: “You cannot apply for a pension!” I was completely bewildered, it was like being dipped with one’s face in the mud. She said I had insufficient pension insurance record. Herein, I have over 30 years of general labour experience, but they told me I couldn’t apply even for the social pension then, - Brest resident Victar Siamionavich has told to “Brestskaya Gazeta”.

Totally shocked, the man left the department on labour and social protection and went to the military enlistment office. He asked there if the legislation indeed provided for such things. “Yes,” – they said. Like, the law is unfair but the military enlistment office could not possibly help him in such situation. “I didn’t get it first – I thought only the term of the army service as a conscript soldier was not included in the pension insurance, but I couldn’t imagine they stole 17 years from me!”

Demonized and fired

Victar Siamionavich has told how it happened that he was left with nothing in the end, having served in the army and worked throughout his life.

He was born in 1956, called up for the military service in November 1974. He served in the North, in Kandalaksha. After demobilization he returned home, to Pruzhany. He took a short rest for a couple of weeks and then applied for the military service again. He was sent to the warrant officers school in Pereyaslavl-Zalesski. Upon graduation thereof, he happened to serve as a communications man in Sherashava, which was in fact his small motherland. Five years later he was transferred to another military unit. Everything went in due course, he often participated in military exercises and performed combat duties. Then he was transferred to Poland. In 1990, Victar was sent to the district headquarters and offered service in Minsk, but he declined the offer. He became a commander of the rigging squadron at the transit base in Rabtsau Street in Brest. He bossed 30-35 people.

“In November 1990, I moved to Brest, and the incident that changed my whole life happened on July 11, 1991, — the interlocutor has said. — I was sent to help the collective farm with a group of soldiers. We worked on straw stockpiling, so of course we were all dirty. The soldiers managed to persuade me go to Lesnaya river in the end of the working day to bathe. I agreed and it was a big mistake. I let them in the river all at once. I stayed at the bank and watched them. One soldier, as it turned out later, couldn’t swim, but he went behind a bush so we couldn’t see him, and stepped into the water. He drowned. We took him out of the water but it was too late – he died…”

The next day, Victar Siamionavich says, a colonel from Moscow arrived as the military unit directly subordinated to the HQ of the Logistic Services of the USSR Armed Forces, and picked a fight with him. “Speaking legally, I committed no violation, — he recalls. — The soldiers were adult people, and I let them persuade me. However, the order to dismiss me arrived from Moscow soon. I had served 17 years by that moment. I asked them to let me serve till 20 years, but no one heard me. However, it was possible to dismiss me right then only if I had had prior disciplinary record, and I had none. I found out later that they re-wrote the order book in one night in the military unit, and backdated two severe reproofs. I came to the squadron commander and asked what he thought he was doing, and he replied it was the order of the battalion commander. The latter was promoted soon. It turns out, the one whom they demonized in this whole story was me.”

Left without means of livelihood

After the dismissal, Victar Siamionavich repeatedly tried to reinstate at military service. He addressed to the tribunal, but, according to him, they replied everything had been done in a proper way in the military unit. When he addressed one more time later, they told he should have done it earlier.

He wrote a letter to the Ministry of Defence, but it didn’t bring any effect: they replied the commander of the military unit should be in charge in case of such situations. Having gone through all this ordeal, he worked in the co-op, he was a loader in a store.

In 1990 – 2002, his family lived in rented apartments. There was a need to solve the accommodation issue, they were at the top of the waiting list for a co-op apartment. So he worked as a foreman at a construction site in Moscow for 7 years to earn for an apartment. A month-month and a half at work – 10 days at home. Upon his return from Moscow, he moonlighted for a while and then registered as an individual entrepreneur. He worked officially for 8 years. Last year there were practically no orders for construction works, so he closed the entrepreneurship.

“When I started working as an individual entrepreneur, the taxation system was as follows: if you don’t work for a certain period, you were released from payment of taxes for this period,” — Victar Siamionavich has reminded. — It wasn’t obligatory to pay to the social protection fund either. In the end, 2 out of 8 years of my entrepreneurship got missed from the pension insurance record. However, I didn’t break the legislation which was in force at that moment?

I served in the other country’s army – The Soviet Union’s. Everything was guaranteed then. In Russia, the military service is included in the pension insurance record, the same is in Ukraine. And here it turns out I am a sort of an outcast, and the service in the Soviet army remains beyond the law. It’s not my fault that the state we served didn’t bother to pay to the insurance fund. It’s so aggravating that they crossed 17 years out of my life. I have never been a social parasite! For as long as I remember myself, I either served or worked, I was never idle. I built several dozen houses in Brest. They calculated only 11 years of pension insurance record, and it’s necessary to have 16 years and a half. I don’t think I am able to work up to that level, moreover, it is getting higher every year. No one needs me now, no one will hire me even as a night guard, due to the health condition. So, I am forced to take odd jobs. The state I served betrayed me. I am too exhausted to struggle with it.”