Minsker From Hostel: There Will Be Riot!

The “state for the people” continues to stand against ordinary Belarusians.

The Belarusian budget requires more financial inflows. And the “servants of the tsar” keep thinking day and night where to find the sources of those inflows. Preferably non-stop ones. As a rule, they come up with nothing better but yet another idea to “rob” the most vulnerable in terms of personal incomes layers of the population, once again.

The tax “for luxury” has not been introduced in Belarus yet, so the local “oligarchs” can feel absolutely safe, belaruspartisan.org writes.

Unlike the students, who were deprived of the right to discout in the public transport; unlike the people with disabilities, teachers, tutors who have to survive on pennies.

Just recently, the officials decided that those who live in the ordinary Belarusian hostels roll in clover and should share their incomes with the state even more. The hostel dwellers will have to pay more for the communal services.

Siarhei is a young man who rents some square meters, where he lives with his wife and little child, from the “socially-oriented” Belarusian state. Here is what he told about.

— Recently, when I was coming back from work, I saw a big advertisement on the hostel doors. It said that, the decision of the Minsk city executive committee, dated this September, establishes the instruction “on the order of determination of payment for the use of residential premises of the state accommodation fund in hostels.”

In short, according to this instruction, which came into force in late November, all Minsk hostels are divided into three categories. The first category includes those hostels which have a separate kitchen and a sanitary block; the second one refers to the hostels with the kitchen at the floor; and the third one refers to the hostels with kitchens, sanitary blocks and showers of common use.

But this is not the most interesting thing. Starting from December, the fee for the state square meters will be determined by the size of the base rate per square meter multiplied by the coefficient “assigned” to the hostel. In the hostels of the first category, this indicator is 1, of the second category — 0.9, and for the worst category of hostels, the third, this indicator is 0.8.

In other words, this means that if earlier my family of three people living on 18 square meters paid about 40 rubles a month for the right to use this premise, then after innovations, taking into account the coefficient of 0.8, by all counts, it will turn out to be 70-80 rubles.

— The hostel that you live in is on the balance of one of the state-owned enterprises. Have you reported the innovations at work?

— The point is, I haven’t! A weird situation occurs: the accommodation facilities, provided to me by the state, is not my property. I cannot privatize it, or give somebody as a present, or leave as heritage. In fact, I am a nobody on these square meters. I live there until I work in the structure of this enterprise. If I have a fight with the boss, God saves, get a disability — no one will keep me in the hostel, they will throw me out together with the wife and the child. Meanwhile, the communal payments for these pitiful 18 meters will make, as I said already, Bn 70-80, in accordance with the new tariffs. This is close to the sum that Minskers pay for the communal serives in the privatized apartments per month.

Where is the logic? The situation is exacerbated by the fact that a simple worker who saw this ad, can hardly figure everything out at once: not everyone can comprehend the formulas and figures born by the "bright minds" of our officials. In addition, we, those who live in hostels on the balance of the state enterprises, are as a rule put before the fact, when they write-off the communal payments automatically from the bank card.

The closest such write-off will occur by December 20. There will be a riot! There will be dozens of dissatisfied families. However, as it always happens here, the outrage will most likely not go beyond the kitchen walls. Because not everyone is willing to risk the roof over one’s head, by expressing their anger. I know that now those who understand the meaning of this trap are already writing letters to the management of their enterprises and to government agencies — there has been no reaction from there yet.

What the state is thinking of, increasing the fee for not the best Belarusian hostels... To make those people, who don’t earn enough to pay the utility bills, return to their native towns and villages? And who will work instead of them? ...