Kalinkavichy Blogger Asks "Hard Questions" To Officials

Youtube has turned into a real headache for the regime in Belarus.

Homel depressed farms got their channel on Youtube – former businessman Vital Manko hosts a popular video blog and shows the real state of the Kalinkavichy economy. Three years ago, two unprofitable cooperatives, Zelianochy and Nasovichy, were combined and attached to the Kalinkavichy mill in the hope of improving their financial condition, but local people assume that it only got worse, belsat.eu writes.

"Several times already, in my videos, I’ve asked the district leadership – show us, what you’ve done from the beginning to the end and what has been done to a good quality. You’ve built a house, haven’t you? After a couple of years, it cracked, broke, there’s mold and mushrooms over there. What has been done?" – blogger Vital Manko told Belsat.

According to him, 10 years ago, there were shops, a bathhouse and farms in the Zelianets village council, which consists of five villages, and after the agricultural production cooperatives became combined, the infrastructure disappeared, and people started to leave – in this vein, nothing but the foundation has remained from the store in the village of Salanik, and the place, where there used to be sheds for livestock, is covered with weeds.

The situation does not look better in the agricultural production cooperative – earlier, there were 30 tractors and 25 cars, but now local people complain about the lack of work and low salaries.

"Tractor driver Siarhei got 1 million 800, or 180 new rubles for 244 trip tickets," – Piotr Puntus, a Salanik resident, complains.

According to the workers, the maximum salaries in the agricultural production cooperative are 300 rubles, which are not enough for life.

Local residents support the blogger – almost 2 thousand persons have subscribed on the channel for half a year of its existence. But deputy chairman of the Kalinkavichy district executive committee Viktar Zamostsik, on the contrary, reproves it, saying that Manko shows the situation nonobjectively.

Vital Manko, in turn, goes offline and speaks at meetings of villagers with officials of the district executive committee, as he believes that they are the problem.

"The system is obsolete, today it is glued and supported, and the second thing is non-professionals, people unsuitable for this activity," – Manko thinks.

But officials do not pay attention to this, and the blogger receives anonymous calls with threats.