Let Him Go back to Aliaksandria!

Drazdy got too fat and brought the Belarusians to poverty.

Only stories of ordinary Belarusian families, not statistics show the truth of the economy. The other day the story of an ordinary family from Glusk thrilled the Internet.

Bread and tea, midday meal - soup, dinner - porridge or tea ... This is not a prison menu of the Jean Valzhan era, this is the ration of a Belarusian family in the 21st century.

Charter97.org asked teacher with 36 years of experience and coordinator of the Vitsebsk BCD Tatstsiana Sevyarynets for comments on a social situation in the Belarusian regions:

- Of course, I read the story of this poor family and I was shocked. I was shocked not with a specific situation of these people, but the situation in the country as a whole. After all, things happening in Glusk are not an exception, but a rule for the Belarusian regions. People have to survive on miserable salaries, pensions or benefits the state deigned to pay for their work.

And the problem is not about the amount of pensions or salaries in Belarus. This is about disproportionately high prices for essential things. They are much higher than our neighbours have, and they keep growing. I know a pensioner who gets a pension of 320 rubles, she does not have anything in the second half of the month.

What should I say more? My pension is high enough for Belarus. But these 340 rubles are not enough for me and my husband for a month! When I pay for utilities and medicines for my husband (about 100 rubles), there is almost nothing left. On the 20th day of every month we quite literally live on bread and water, just like the family from Glusk. I'm not talking about any vitamins, vegetables, fruits, meat. This is all really expensive. Not everyone who does not own a garden can now afford this!

But this is not the way pensioners take. My every daughter has three children. They also do not have enough money till the end of the month. Sometimes I have to pay for their phones.

The authority is the one to blame for the situation in the regions. Belarusians are ready to work and earn, but there is no work in the regions, and if there is, then the real salary is often not more than 100 rubles. What can these 100 rubles change?! People already work for 60 rubles a month! And there are situations when two adults are unemployed and have to live on a child allowance. Or on disability allowance. This is really a paradox: people should rejoice and thank fate for a disabled person in the family.

This is awful! And there is only one question for the authorities: why do we, a "prosperous country", live like this? Why cannot we go on vacation? Why is money enough only for essential thing, and not for culture, theater, books?

There is only one way out: we must organize ourselves and demand from those who got too fat (I'm not afraid of saying this) in their Drazdy to give the people what belongs to them. Let Natallia Kachanava leave her cozy house built probably because she "worked on two jobs" and live on a salary or a pension of an ordinary Belarusian. Let her feel the real standard of living in our country, find out what the prices really are in shops, and the cost of a monthly government cheese.

I am now in the Vitebsk Bileva microdistrict. There are only women in the streets. It looks like a war took away all men! Some of them left for Russia, other for Europe to work. This is not possible to support a family in Belarus. And this Madame Kachanava reproaches the Belarusians that they do not want to "work on 2-3 jobs". Belarusians can do and do it, but you have no work for them!

Only one thing can be done here: to demand a worthy life from the government.

- But Lukashenka believes that not all reserves of Belarusians have been squeezed out, and on the weekend he himself demanded people to improve the regions, "raise" their small motherlands...

- And God grant that he will forever return to his Aliaksandria on this wave! Let him go to his small motherland, good riddance to bad rubbish! Let him direct this appeal to his own precious self, go back to Aliaksandria and make it "prosperous".

He can even build himself a new house instead of the hut he was born in. Only before that, let him give all his 17 residences to children of Belarusians who could relax in these palaces built on public money.